


When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun

by Mejhiren



Series: When the Mooniverse [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Animal Bride/Bridegroom, Appalachia, Avoxes, Birds, Breakfast, Bridal Braids, Butchering, Canon Divergent, Christ!Peeta, Copious Descriptions of Food, Cozy, Cuddling & Snuggling, Deer, Dream Sequences, East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Freeform, Eucharistic imagery, F/M, Fairy Tales, Fawns, Feeding Birds, Folk Tales, Furs and Skins, Heritage & Traditions, Hunting, Huntress - Freeform, Isbjørn, Katniss Sings, Kissing Boughs, Lover's Tokens, Maternal Longing, Moon!Katniss, Multi-Level Everlark, Peeta Cooks for Katniss, Red Ribbons, Rites and Rituals, Slow Burn, Taming the Fox, Tanning, The Little Prince - Freeform, The Little Prince and the Fox, Toasting, Victor Peeta, Virgin!Everlark, White Bear, Winter, apple tree, new year's, oblivious to love, snow fun, song of solomon, sun and moon, sweethearts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 380,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mejhiren/pseuds/Mejhiren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It's something out of an old tale: a golden young man in a white bearskin, striking strange bargains with desperate souls on the cruelest night of winter.</i> </p><p>Peeta Mellark, winner of the 74th Hunger Games, returns from his Victory Tour to make the starving Everdeens an offer they can't refuse. Canon divergent, based on the fairy tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Bargain

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [East of the Sun and West of the Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/11574) by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen & Jørgen Moe. 



> If you haven't read "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" – a beloved Norwegian fairy tale with nods to "Beauty and the Beast" and the myth of Cupid and Psyche – you'll still be able to follow this fic, though it will, of course, be much more fun if you know at least the basic storyline. You can read the fairy tale in its entirety at Sur La Lune Fairy Tales (dot com), and it is also included in most fairy tale anthologies (including Andrew Lang's "Blue Fairy Book"). There are some lovely illustrated editions out and about, including a very unique retelling by Mercer Mayer, in which the heroine has long dark hair and wields a bow. (And yes, her boy is blond. :D)
> 
> On a sidenote, I feel slightly clever in there already being an Appalachian precedent for this – namely, an Appalachian retelling of the fairy tale called, variously, "Snowbear Whittington," "Whitebear Whittington," "Three Drops of Blood," or "Three Gold Nuts."
> 
> This story is affectionately, humbly dedicated to DustWriter, who writes the most beautifully excruciating Peeta/Katniss angst I've ever read and who made me fall in love with AUs. (A few obsessive evenings of burning through her AUs effectively derailed the serious post-Mockingjay fic I'd been working on for months and sent me catapulting into writing this one.) If you're of a consenting age, find – and read – "Bliss" NOW. Really.

  _Wherever the landscape is wild, the winters long and bitter, and the villages small and isolated, magic and mystery thrive.  
_ ~Naomi Lewis, Introduction to  _East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon_

_They had not enough to eat, and their clothes were patched and worn because they were very poor…_  
_Late one night, when the wild wind blew terribly against their little cottage, there came a tapping at their door._  
_The family was huddled by the fireside keeping busy hand and mind and trying very hard not to hear the wind's horrible howl._  
~ _East of the Sun and West of the Moon,_ retold by Kathleen and Michael Hague

The snow has been falling, thick and heavy, since before the Harvest Festival. It's a cruel winter already – a tradeoff for having our first Victor in 24 years, everyone says. The next Parcel Day is still four days away, and already our navels seem to rub our spines. It's been so cold that Prim and I moved our mattress to the floor in front of the kitchen fire, hoping to take advantage of the heat. Prim sits there now, petting her hideous, feral cat, Buttercup, while pondering math homework. It's a joke, really; expecting any sort of learning from children who are steadily freezing and starving to death.

Lady, Prim's spotted nanny goat, bleats plaintively from her bed-box at the foot of our mattress, and Prim leans over to stroke her between the ears. We usually keep her out behind the house in a lopsided little hut that Prim and I pieced together from branches and bartered old crates, but it's been so viciously cold this winter that we had to bring her in. She's pregnant, due in early spring, and we can't risk losing the kids – or her. And two weeks ago, we started pulling the hut apart for kindling. Hungry as we are, we'll never eat Lady – it would be a poor investment in the long run, sacrificing our future income for a few days of meat, not to mention it would shatter Prim – but if things get any worse we'll have to sell her. She's been subsisting on kitchen scraps ever since the grain ran out, but there are fewer and fewer scraps for  _us_ to eat, let alone pass along to her. Once the snow lets up, I'll try the trash bins behind the grocer's. A half-rotted squash would feed all of us for a day.

In the meantime, our house smells musty, like livestock. Prim is tireless in cleaning up Lady's waste, at chasing her outside whenever the weather warms up a merciful degree or two, but I can only be thankful that the bitter cold minimizes the smell of dung. I refuse to sleep with Lady – or with Buttercup, for all the good  _that_  does me – but sometimes I wake to find Prim curled up in the bed-box with her.

I wash the supper dishes, hands shaking in the tepid water. I'm wearing one of Dad's sweaters over two shirts of my own, but it's not the cold that's breaking me. Hunting has never been as poor as this winter. There's nothing to feed ourselves, let alone to trade for other foodstuffs. Supper tonight – the heartiest in a week – consisted of four blackbirds and our last two potatoes. I'd hoped to make a pie out of them – blackbirds have precious little meat on their bones, and the potatoes were small and shriveled – but there wasn't enough flour, so I used a few spoonfuls of it to thicken a gravy instead, adding sprinkles of our precious salt and dried herbs, and baked it all in a pie pan in hopes that no one would miss the crust.

 _Blackbirds baked in a pie…_  Like something out of an old tale, Mom said. Truth be told, we were so glad to have meat of any kind that none of us cared what it was or where it came from, let alone that it was baked without a crust.

There's a knock at the door – polite, not urgent – and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. After dark, in this weather, it won't be Peacekeepers. Most likely it's someone needing my mother – badly, for them to be out on such a night. A birthing, maybe? I'm half-tempted to shout at them to go away. Even if my mother delivers the baby safe and sound, it's unlikely to live out this lean winter.

The knock comes again, no more insistent than before, and I dry my hands on the dishtowel. Not a birthing, then. Any business for Mom means some tiny token for us – a loaf of bread, maybe, or a cut of meat – not the best nor the freshest, but something sufficient to split three ways. And in this brutal winter, we can't afford to pass up any opportunity to get food.

I pull open the door, wincing at the rush of wind and blinding snow, to see Peeta Mellark, Victor of this year's Hunger Games, standing outside in his heavy white bearskin coat. He's turned up the collar against the cold and holds it closed over his nose and mouth with one gloved hand, but it's unmistakably him.

Everyone knows about Peeta and the bear. It's one of those moments that will be replayed, over and over again, till they come up with something cleverer and even crueler than the Games.

No one in Twelve ever wants to go to the Games, least of all me, but when the cameras panned out from the Cornucopia this year, I knew it should've been my arena. A hunter's arena. A forest of scrubby pine circling two jagged mountains, so cold that the tributes' breath steamed from their platforms. It snowed every night – not heavily, just enough to keep the tributes from getting too comfortable. Elk and black bear – aggressively territorial and too large for most of the tributes to kill, let alone make use of as food – populated the woods; predatory eagles the mountains. I could feed three people with four blackbirds; I would've survived the entire Games on a single kill. A pelt, meat, bones and teeth and claws for weapons…I almost cried when a bow-wielding Career shot a charging elk and went to the carcass only to retrieve his arrow.

They were down to the final two – Peeta and Cato, the final surviving Career, locked in fierce hand-to-hand combat in the thick of a snowstorm – when the true muttation arrived: an enormous white bear, three times the size of either tribute. It attacked and savaged Cato, dragging him off Peeta and tearing open his throat – a gory wound, but not precise enough for a quick death.

Peeta climbed to his feet, reaching for the spear he'd lost in the fight. His right leg was failing; a wolverine had torn the calf open to the bone before he'd managed to club it to death, and he'd bound the gash with a clumsy, makeshift tourniquet, but it was clear he could barely match Cato at this point, let alone a massive bear. Even in the blizzard, his blood pooled vibrantly on the snow.

He didn't have a Career's accuracy of throw and was clever enough not to attempt it. Bracing himself with the last of his strength, he poised the spear with both hands and let the bear charge him. The force of its own body drove it onto the spear.

The dying bear crashed forward, trapping Peeta beneath it – I couldn't imagine it hadn't crushed him with its weight – but, twenty tense seconds later, the carcass shifted and rolled to its back as Peeta emerged from beneath, bloodstained and shaken but still alive. Watching from my home in the Seam, I sat breathless beside Prim, a fist pressed to my mouth, and wondered why my eyes were watering.

With Gamemaker precision, the wind dropped, the heavy snowfall ceased, and a brilliant amber sunset beamed down on the triumphant tribute from District 12. And for that moment, the sweet baker's boy became a glorious hunter. Somewhere in the Capitol, teenage girls have posters of that moment: Peeta braced on a bloody spear, standing over the carcass of an enormous white bear, his hair like spun gold in the sunset.

It lasted little more than a moment. Peeta stumbled away from the bear, his leg streaming blood, and went back to help Cato, who'd nearly bled out already. He tore a sleeve from his own jacket and made a compress for Cato's neck, but the blood quickly pulsed through the material, seeping between Peeta's fingers as he applied more pressure. However badly wounded himself, Peeta would clearly be the Victor in a matter of minutes, outlasting the most ruthless Career to fight in the 74th Hunger Games.

To the astonishment of all of Panem, Peeta wept at the realization. He removed the remains of his jacket and pillowed them beneath Cato's head, then – keeping one blood-slick hand on the compress – began to murmur gently to the dying Career. Comforting nonsense about the vibrant orange of the sunset, the diamond-like shimmer of the snow. How peaceful it would be to fall asleep in this beautiful place. He was still murmuring when the cannon fired. Still murmuring when the hovercraft came.

It was a controversial victory, perhaps – Capitol viewers had watched from the edge of their seats, expecting Peeta's kindness to be a strategy, a distraction, so he could take Cato's knife and slit his throat completely – but after his defeat of the bear, who begrudged Peeta a sentimental gesture or two? An enterprising Gamemaker retrieved the bear's carcass, had the pelt removed – as well as the teeth and claws, to be crafted into jewelry and sold to swooning Capitol socialites at outrageous prices – and presented it to Peeta during the recap with Caesar. The crowd erupted. Victor Peeta Mellark and the image of the white bear had become inseparable. Five months later, he began his Victory Tour in a coat his stylist made of the bearskin. A gesture of compliance, perhaps, but a stunning one.

And now he stands on my doorstep, majestically bearlike in his fur and wreathed in blowing snow. He lowers the collar from his face, blinking fiercely in the light from inside, and says – shouts, really, against the wind – "If you will give me your daughter Katniss –"

"You what?" I blurt, too confused to be polite.

His cheeks darken. Clearly, I am not who he expected to answer the door. "I…Good evening, Katniss," he says. Despite the blush, his voice is pleasant and even, but then, Peeta's always been good with an audience.

"Do you want my mother?" I guess, my mind reeling from what I think I heard him say.

"Yes, please."

He ducks gratefully out of the storm, stamping the snow from his boots before coming inside. Prim looks on curiously from the kitchen doorway; Mom, seated at the table in the living room, frowns slightly. "Peeta Mellark," she says.

His presence is too big and bright for our tiny, squalid house. His blond hair, his fair skin – made paler still by winter – are almost luminescent in the darkness, the white fur of his coat radiant by coal-firelight. I gesture frantically to Prim and we hurry into the kitchen to move our mattress out of sight, propping it up against the wall.

Peeta nods an acknowledgement to my mother as he draws off his gloves, but I know he couldn't possibly have missed our pitiful attempt at tidying up. My face burns with shame. "Could I speak with you for a moment, Mrs. Everdeen?" he asks.

"Of course." Mom rises to bring a second chair to the table. Peeta called at a good time; it'll be firewood by the end of the week. "Would you like tea?"

"Yes, thank you."

He seats himself across from Mom and they engage in small talk about the bakery, his brothers, the Victory Tour. The Harvest Festival two weeks ago, celebrating his return to the district. I busy my hands preparing the tea, my mind confused and racing.  _If you will give me your daughter Katniss…_ Could I possibly have misheard him?

We have plenty of dried mint in the cupboard but barely a tablespoon of proper tea leaves. Still, a visit from a wealthy Victor merits the very best. I dump the entire contents of the tea tin into our battered pot, compensate for the shortage with a few pinches of mint, and pour on hot water. Our nearly empty honeypot is crystallized with the cold, and we won't have milk again – let alone cheese to sell – till Lady kids in March. We have three mugs – all chipped – no saucers, and certainly no cakes or cookies to sweeten the cup. It's a feeble tea to set before the baker's son, let alone a Victor, but something tells me that's not what he came for.

I place a mug of tea and the honeypot at Peeta's right hand and he looks up at me suddenly. His blue eyes are earnest and strangely intense; I blush and quickly move away.  _If you will give me your daughter Katniss…_  It had all the ballast – and raw nerve – of a prepared speech. But for what purpose?  _Give. Me. Katniss._  Those words in that order make no sense whatsoever. Not from Peeta, not from anyone.

I return to the kitchen, where Prim is drying our few supper dishes, and prepare tea for her and Mom. Both would love honey, but the pot has barely enough left in it for one serving, and I've already offered it to Peeta. I would love a cup of tea myself to settle the flutter in my stomach, but there are only three mugs, and Peeta's holding the third. I nudge one toward Prim – she smiles sadly, comprehending; hollow as she is, she'll save me at least half of her portion – and carry the other in to Mom.

Our house is too small to afford privacy; still, I try to look preoccupied as Mom asks our visitor, "What can I do for you, Peeta? Something for your father, perhaps? We've little enough at the moment, I'm afraid."

"No, Mrs. Everdeen. I…"

I freeze at Mom's shoulder, feeling the weight in words yet unspoken. Peeta takes a sip of his tea, leaving the honeypot untouched. For all his social pleasantries, he's made no move to remove the white bearskin. Mom gestures encouragingly for him to continue.

He looks up at her – only at her – and his bright eyes are steady as he speaks. "If you will give me your daughter Katniss – to come and live with me in my Victor's Residence – I will make you as rich as you are now poor."

A stunned, disbelieving silence envelopes the house. Like our blackbird pie, it's something out of an old tale: a golden young man in a white bearskin, striking strange bargains with desperate souls on the cruelest night of winter. My pulse pounds at my temples, heavy and resonant as a tribute cannon. I seem to have forgotten how to breathe.

Mom recovers her voice first. "I beg your pardon?"

Peeta tries again, appearing – for the first time in his life – to be lost for words. "If you will give me your daughter Katniss –"

"Do you want to marry her?" Mom interrupts, frowning. "You're both full young for that."

Peeta's pale cheeks flush scarlet. My chest is so tight that it hurts. "I-I want her," he says carefully, "to come and live with me…in my Victor's Residence. In return for this, I will pay you generously." He clears his throat. "More than generously. You will have a new house, warm clothes, plenty of food – anything you desire. You will never be cold or hungry again."

I try to speak but my throat is frozen.  _Give me Katniss. I want her. In return…House. Clothes. Food._  I look over my shoulder at Prim, who is hovering, wide-eyed, at the kitchen doorway. Almost thirteen, she should be developing a figure like our mother's at that age; instead, she's thin as a rail. Hollow-cheeked, lank-haired, scrawny as a boy. If I go with Peeta –

"Why do you want her?" Mom asks. Her voice is cool and even. Either she's past shock, to discuss this as a simple business matter, or she's caught in the very thick of it.

"I want…" For a moment, I'm afraid Peeta's going to say it all again. "I'm lonely, Mrs. Everdeen," he says instead. "My new home is…remote. I have a small household staff; Katniss would be very well taken care of. Have the very best I can give her."

"Why her?" Mom persists – my mind is stuck back at the foreign concepts of  _household staff_ and  _well taken care of_. "Why not one of your brothers – or a friend from school?"

"My brothers don't want to leave town," he explains without skipping a beat, clearly having anticipated this question, "and my father needs them at the bakery, now that I'm gone. My friends, similarly, are needed at home." His blue eyes flicker to me for the first time as he adds, "I have a high regard for Katniss. I think we would…deal well together."

This is hardly an answer, though it – the look and his words – makes my stomach flutter strangely. Mom's lips tighten; her patience is wearing thin. "You want her to work for you?"

"I want her to live with me." His voice breaks at this – is he nervous? "I want her company, Mrs. Everdeen, nothing more." He clears his throat again. "Nothing…untoward. In return, you and Primrose would be assured a comfortable life."

And with that, I know he's lost her. Mom has left Prim and I to our own devices for the past five years – let us fade and fail, very nearly starve to death – but deep down she's still a proud apothecary's daughter. An exchange of this sort is unthinkable.

She levels Peeta with a disapproving stare, and her voice is frigid as she replies: "And what kind of mother would I be, to sell my daughter for my own comfort? To trade one daughter's happiness for the other's? My answer is no, and I'll not apologize for it."

I wait for more persuasive words, for an elaboration on promises far too good to be true, but Peeta only nods slowly, aware of the finality in her tone. "I understand, Mrs. Everdeen." He glances at me before adding quietly, "I apologize if the request caused offense. I give you good evening."

Without another word, he sets down his tea and rises to go, taking with him the promise of food, warmth, clothing – of surviving more than another day or two of this terrible winter. The vague idea of companionship, of being taken care of, barely registers in my mind as my paralysis breaks.

"Yes," I choke.

Peeta turns sharply about, his eyes wide and focused only on me. "What did you say?" he whispers.

"Yes," I repeat, quavering but resolved. "I'll go with you."

"Katniss!" Mom hisses, the same time Prim wails, "No!"

I bite back an echoing sob at my little sister's grief, reminding myself that if I don't do this – if I don't leave her – neither of us will survive this winter. "You need the food, Mom!" I exclaim. "That's the last of the honey and the tea. I used almost all our flour making gravy for the blackbirds – the first meat we've had in a week, and it took me all afternoon to get them! We've got a cup of oats and one egg –" I suck in a shaky breath, wiping fiercely at my eyes – "until the next Parcel Day. Lady won't give milk again till spring, and that's if we can keep  _her_  fed her for three more months. Prim needs a new jacket and boots and –"

I collapse into myself with a sob that turns to a cough, wrapping my arms across my thin chest. I see Peeta move out of the corner of my eye, a blur of gold and white, as though he took a step toward me, then thought better of it.

Mom grips Prim's hand, unrelenting. "We'll figure something out."

" _What_ , Mom?" I plead. "There's nothing left! Nothing to sell, nothing to hunt –"

"Please – Katniss, Mrs. Everdeen – it's all right," Peeta interrupts. He's backed toward the door and his face is very pale. "I'll come back for your answer tomorrow –"

"You'll stay and hear it now!" I'm shouting at him, but he can't leave, can't walk out of here, taking Prim's food and clothes – her very life – with him. I turn to Mom and the memory pours out of me like blood from a wound. "When I was eleven years old, Peeta saved my life."

Someone catches their breath – Peeta or Prim – but I can't tell, can't stop, can't look away from Mom's cold, stern face. She's never heard this before, and it's time and past she did. Time and past she understood the debt I've been living under these five years.

"Dad was dead and you were in your own world, leaving two little girls with no one to feed or take care of them. No money coming in. Drinking broth made of mint leaves because it was all we had to eat. I went to the Hob – a little girl, going to the Hob – and tried to sell some of Prim's old baby clothes –" My voice breaks. Why does the memory of those stupid baby clothes make so sad? "And no one wanted them. I dropped them in the rain and didn't pick them up again because I was too weak. I went behind the Merchant houses, hoping to find some food in their trash bins, but the baker's wife saw me and yelled at me and chased me away…"

I'm eleven years old again, terrified of the baker's wife, drenched and shivering and hollow with hunger. "I crawled under their apple tree to die – _die_ , Mom!" I sob. Mom shakes her head, frowning in confusion, not sorrow, and the tears spill down my cheeks at her detachment, even now. "There was nothing left. I could just as soon die under that tree than crawl home and die, watching Prim die, and then –"

I look at Peeta for the first time through my tears. His face is blanched white as bone. Does he even remember that day? Is he embarrassed that I brought it up?

I look away again – he won't want to remember this part. "Peeta dropped two loaves of bread in the fire and his mom hit him in the face for it. I don't know if he burned it on purpose, but when she sent him to throw the bread to their pig, he threw it to me instead. That bread kept us  _alive_ , Mom!" I cry. "Me and Prim – and you! I've never said thank you, and I've never paid him back. And now he's offering to take care of you and Prim, give you a good home, food, clothes. He's the richest man in the district; he can do it, and he will.

"So  _yes_ , I'll go live with him!" My voice is keening, almost a shriek, but I can't stop now. "I'll do whatever he wants! I'll clean his house, darn his socks – I'll lick his boots if he asks me!"

"Katniss." Peeta stands three feet away, but I feel his voice like a gentle hand on my arm. I look at him again; his eyes are too bright, almost feverish. Can he possibly be crying too, or does it just seem like the whole world is because I am? "You don't owe me anything," he says raggedly.

"I'm going with you," I say firmly – or try to; my voice wobbles with tears. "End of discussion."

I wipe at my streaming eyes and nose, collecting myself, forcing myself to meet his eyes. Peeta looks for a moment as though he's about to change his mind – a blubbering, angry, starving Katniss was surely not what he was bargaining for when he walked into our house this evening – and then Prim blurts, "How long would she go with you?"

I wish she'd asked anything but this. We all know the answer – even her, deep down – have known it since Peeta first made his offer, but this forces it out into the open. I can't bear the look on Peeta's face. Like the rest of the district, he adores Prim. He can't lie, and he can't tell her the truth. Can't tell her I'm going away forever so she can have food and clothes and a warm house to live in.

So I answer for him, but I don't have his fine words, and it comes out harsh and a little exasperated: "For pity's sake, Prim: he's  _buying_ me, not renting me for a few months to see how we get along!" Peeta flinches at that, but I barrel on: "You wouldn't expect him to make you rich in exchange for just a month or two of my company, would you?"

Prim bursts into tears, and I turn quickly to Peeta, silencing him with a look. I really don't want to know how he would answer my question, and another word of kindness will break me entirely. "Yes," I say again, my voice a little steadier. "If you will take care of my mother and sister; if you will…supply them with food and clothes…a-and a better place to live –" I can't wrap my mind around that most of all – "I will come and live with you in your Victor's Residence."

Mom's shock and Prim's sniffles temporarily cease to exist while I wait for Peeta's response. He exhales slowly, a long shaky sigh that conveys strangely little relief. "Thank you, Katniss," he says. "My father will come tomorrow to discuss arrangements with your mother. If it's…agreeable to you, I'll collect you after supper on my way through town."

 _Tomorrow._ Go with Peeta forever, tomorrow. But then: why not? The sooner I go with Peeta, the sooner Mom and Prim are taken care of. I have next to nothing to pack. And the last thing I want is to sit for days fretting over the decision I've made, dealing with endless questions from friends and neighbors –  _Gale!_  I wince at the thought. He'll shake me till my teeth rattle for making such a mad bargain. I can't leave without saying goodbye to my best friend…or can I?

"Tomorrow after supper would be perfect," I tell Peeta.

I offer a hand – it feels like the sort of deal that requires a closing handshake – and Peeta takes it in both of his. His hands are strong and warm and easily envelope my small, grubby, work-roughened hand, and for the first time, I wonder if my side of the bargain might not be so bad. A lifetime of cooking and cleaning in a Victor's Residence for kind, solid Peeta Mellark would be infinitely better than any future I could devise here in Twelve.

"Thank you, Katniss," he says again, squeezing my hand briefly before releasing it. "Until tomorrow."

I walk him to the door. The wind has eased, but the snow continues to fall in thick, heavy flakes. Somehow, since the promise of food-clothes-home for Prim, the winter night has become beautiful.

Peeta hesitates at the threshold, pulling on his gloves. "Katniss, don't do this," he says suddenly, so quiet that neither Mom nor Prim will hear. "Not to repay a debt."

His startling Merchant-blue eyes catch and hold mine. I wonder why it matters, and why it feels like he would break the deal right now if debt was my only motivator. "I'm not," I tell him – a half-lie. I owe him my life, and we need what he's promised. All of us.

He considers this for a moment, clearly unconvinced, then turns up the collar of his bearskin. "Until tomorrow, then," he murmurs, and vanishes into the snow.


	2. Gifts and Goodbyes

_After thinking for a few moments, she said quietly that she would be willing to go with the bear if it would help the family…  
_ _There was something about him that made her feel totally safe…  
_ ~ _East of the Sun & West of the Moon_, retold by László Gál

Mom objects, of course, and I ignore her. I push the honeypot at her; there’s little enough left anyway, and after tomorrow, they’ll probably have real sugar on the table. She in turn pushes it toward Prim, who stops crying long enough to take several bracing gulps of the strong, minty tea.

I pick up Peeta’s mug, still half full, and, after a moment’s deliberation, sip from the side opposite to where he drank, finishing the tea. It feels intimate, strangely familiar – the sort of thing a mother would do for her child or a husband his wife – but I remind myself that, until Peeta makes good on his promise, we can’t waste even a scrap of food. And tonight’s supper was scant; our bellies will be hollow by midnight. Strong hot tea will take the edge off.

I rinse the mug in the cold dishwater and lay out Prim’s and my mattress and blankets. Sleep won’t come easily tonight, but better to try than to face Mom’s vocal disapproval and Prim’s tears. Both will keep till tomorrow. I stir the fire then lie on my side, closing my eyes at the welcome warmth on my face.

I am unsurprised when my sister’s bird-like weight settles behind me. Her tiny fingers skim, spiderlike, over my back as she whispers, “Why do you think he wants you?”

“I don’t know, little duck,” I admit. “To wash his dishes, do his laundry. Scrub his floors, maybe.”

“But why _you_?” she persists, as Mom did an hour before. “There are stronger people, older people…less complicated people he could’ve asked.”

“I don’t know,” I say again, burying my face in the rough pillow cover. It’s still so unbelievable that I can barely spare a thought for the whys. Right now, all my brain can manage is hope that Peeta doesn’t wake up tomorrow and rethink the bargain in the light of day. Prim’s right: I’m sixteen, scrawny and weak from hunger. I can make foraged foods palatable but am no degree of a cook, and up till now, my housekeeping routine has been based on survival. Keep the chimney clear and the ashes behind the grate. Scald or burn anything that could carry bacteria. Make full use of every part of a kill, from rabbit bones in soup stock to a squirrel’s brushtail, tucked into a boot for warmth. Last summer I accumulated enough pheasant feathers to fill a pillow. Prim wept at the gift.

As Peeta saw tonight, I’m accustomed to sleeping on the floor in front of our kitchen fire. I bathe in the same washtub we use for laundry – and use the same soap. My nails are torn and dirty, pared down with a knife only when they start to snag things, and after two weeks of sleeping by the fire – and a goat – I smell like a combination of cinders and a stockyard. I’m as refined as a rabid cougar – about as sweet-tempered too – and he wants me in his kitchen?

Prim sinks behind me, defeated, and makes herself a nest in the blankets. I feel horrible; this is our last night together, probably forever, but I really don’t want to talk. Or think. I stare into the flames till my eyelids grow heavy.

I dream that I’m in the woods, knee-deep in snow, bowless and starving and looking for blackberries on barren branches, when a huge white bear approaches and drops a bundle at my feet. The bundle contains four dead blackbirds and a loaf of hearty dark bread, full of nuts and raisins. I devour one of the blackbirds raw, plus half of the bread, and wipe my bloody hands in the snow. The bear bends down for me to get onto his back; more reluctant than afraid, I climb astride him, grabbing fistfuls of his heavy coat. His back is broad and strong. I feel the movement of tendon and muscle against my thighs as he pads through the snow.

The bear brings me home and follows me into the house. I’m not sure how he fits through the door. His thick white coat is brilliant even in our dim, smoky house; it almost hurts to look at him. I clean and cook the remaining blackbirds for Mom and Prim and slice up the bread while the bear sits, patiently waiting. Once I’ve made their dinner, he walks out of the house and I know I’m supposed to follow.

Outside, a snowstorm rages, piercing pellets of sleet in a wind to peel the flesh from your bones. I climb astride the bear again; somehow, I have no coat and huddle against his back for warmth, burying my hands and face in his thick fur. It smells of ice and pine and a young man’s body.

I ride for an eternity before reaching a palace – the sort you imagine in the oldest tales, all high stone walls and tiny slitted windows – and he leaves me at the front gate. I go inside without further instruction; the rooms are grand but neglected, and I scrub and mop and dust myself to exhaustion. Finally I creep down to the kitchen, where a pallet has been placed in front of the enormous hearth. I lie down gratefully, my face toward the fire, and have nearly drifted off when I feel a massive weight settle against my back. The bear is lying behind me on the pallet, his broad back pressed to mine. I feel his fur against my bare feet, and for the first time in the dream, I’m truly terrified.

I wake with a start at the pressure of a warm body against my back and turn to see Prim huddled against me in her sleep. I give an audible sigh of relief but don’t lie down again. My back is damp with sweat.

It’s Saturday. I’m grateful it isn’t a school day; the fewer people I have to see today, the better. Twelve is a desperate district, but something like this would still be scandalous. The idea of a Victor buying a companion – buying _me_ as that companion – is even more ludicrous by daylight, and I can well imagine the questions and rumors that will be flung about.

I peer out the kitchen window rather than up at the clock. The sky is pale; the sun, if it chooses to show its face today, must be well on its way up. I get up quickly, tucking the blankets around Prim, and rebraid my hair, then I dress in a pair of Dad’s threadbare thermals, an equally worn pair of corduroy trousers, belted snugly around my bony hips, and a roomy but shapeless gray sweater. Two pairs of socks, my hunting boots and jacket, a scarf, gloves, a stocking cap; I’m bundled warmly, not heavily, when I finally leave the house. But then, I’m not hunting this morning. I’m going to get my bow and arrows. Hopefully without running into Gale.

It’s slow going through the latest fall of snow, but last night’s heavy flakes and lack of wind have left the district unexpectedly beautiful. Every branch of every tree and shrub is outlined with shimmering snow, like a winter fairyland in the old tales that seem to be cropping up at every turn. Even the electric fence – perpetually switched off in this cold to redirect the energy to more vital areas, like the Justice Building – looks delicate as a spiderweb this morning. Once the sun comes out and the coal dust settles, the fragile snow traces will melt and our footprints turn the pristine paths muddy and gray, but in this moment, I think Twelve has never been lovelier.

I slip under the fence and brush the snow from my jacket and trousers. Mine are the only tracks this morning, I note with relief. Gale will probably show within a half hour, but that’s plenty of time for me to accomplish my purpose.

Peeta’s aware of my hunting, I think. He’s bought squirrels from Gale and me when his father was busy – and, of course, I mentioned the blackbirds last night in my rant at Mom. I don’t know what duties he has in store for me, but I’m not leaving without my bow.

I reach into the hollow trunk for the well-wrapped bundle that contains my bow and sheath of arrows. I’ve been worried about both in this cold but have been careful to oil the wood – a ridiculous expense, some days, but the bow is priceless, near irreplaceable. I sling the sheath over my shoulder and heft the bow, but I hesitate before turning for home. What if Peeta lied? What if he changed his mind? At the least, I should cut some pine bark before heading back. It’s unpleasant but will carry us through one more day – one more meal, anyway. I haven’t brought my foraging bag, but I can fill the pockets of my jacket.

I remember that I haven’t brought a knife and curse quietly. So much for the pine bark. I haven’t seen a rabbit in three weeks, but maybe I could get another bird? I try to think how far I can stretch one egg, a cup of oats, and a half-cup of flour. One small batch of oatcakes, or should I make oatmeal, hard-boil the egg, and split it all three ways? Mom won’t have touched the honey; I can melt it down, make whatever I decide on more palatable.

Survival panic kicks in, hard. I can’t go back without more food of some kind. I’ll bring pine needles for tea; we haven’t had them for a while, and maybe I can boil them for soup stock. I head toward the nearest pine tree and curse again. _Pine needle tea, Katniss?_ What was I thinking? It would be no more sustaining than the gallons of mint tea we’ve drunk over the last month. We _need_ meat. A vegetable or two – a carrot would be a lifesaver at this point. A loaf of good bread. I won’t find any of that out here. I’d be better off going back for a knife to cut some pine bark.

I turn around to do just that and walk smack into Gale.

I curse for a third time as he steadies me. “You’re distracted this morning,” he teases. “And in a hurry too. Planning to leave without saying goodbye?”

I gape at him. “How do you…?”

“Vick swore he saw Mellark’s pony and cart outside your house last night,” he says. This surprises me – embarrasses me a little. I should’ve realized Peeta wouldn’t walk from town to the edge of the Seam on such a stormy night, but now that Gale mentions it, I haven’t thought twice about how he got there or how he got back home.

Gale goes on: “Sae’s been telling him Father Christmas stories again and, well…it was a hollow night. Easy to see things in the snow.”

I know what he means. How easy it is to dream up good things that aren’t really there. Shortly after Dad died, I dreamt I ate a whole rabbit, oven-roasted with real butter and herbs, only to wake up and remember I hadn’t eaten anything in two days.

“Anyway, I came by the house a bit ago and your mom told me the news.” He frowns as though he’s just tasted something bad.

I scowl back at him. “Don’t try and talk me out of it,” I warn. “There’s no food, Gale.”

“I know,” he says frankly.

“You can barely feed your family, let alone mine.” I know he’ll have considered this alternative.

“I know,” he says again. “I just wish there was another way.”

“It’s a pretty good plan, actually,” I tell him. “He’s feeding my family, and all I have to do is…live with him.”

Gale’s frown deepens. “That’s the part that worries me.”

I snort with an amusement I don’t feel. “Peeta’s a good man, Gale,” I say, reassuring myself as much as him. “He won’t hurt me.”

“I know,” he admits. He winces as though it costs him something. “I just don’t know how I feel about him being… _with_ you…like that.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, genuinely confused.

“His house is on the other side of the lake,” he says, a strange edge to his voice. “At least two hours from town on foot. What do you think he plans to do with you once you’re out in the middle of nowhere, Catnip?”

“He’s lonely,” I answer, a little too quickly to cover up a flutter of fear at Gale’s words. “He wants company. I figure he’ll give me a list of chores, find me a little cupboard to sleep in, bring me out for a conversation every now and then.”

Gales sighs roughly. “I hope you’re right,” he says. “I just…” He shakes his head. “I _really_ hope you’re right.”

“Gale, he saved my life five years ago,” I remind him. “He’s saving it again, _and_ the lives of my family. I’ll do whatever he wants.”

His eyes widen in horror. “Katniss, no!”

“He doesn’t want _that_.” I blush, remembering the conversation. “Mom asked him –” She’d asked if he wanted to marry me, not if he wanted to sleep with me. I brush past this detail. “It embarrassed him. He just…wants me around,” I say lamely. “I don’t know why.”

“You really don’t, do you?” he says. His voice is soft, almost gentle. He looks a little sad.

“What?” I retort. Something in his remark irks me, as though what he’s talking about is perfectly obvious but I’m too young or too stupid to understand. When he doesn’t answer right away, I push past him and head toward the pine tree again. “Do you have a knife?” I ask over my shoulder. “I want to cut some pine bark.”

Gale laughs abruptly, a short, humorless laugh. “Make up your mind, Catnip,” he calls after me. “Do you trust him or don’t you?”

I spin around in the snow, cheeks burning with anger. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He smiles wryly and comes over to me, shaking his head. “It means that you trust him to take you into the woods, keep you at his house for the rest of your life and never lay a hand on you, but you don’t trust him to feed your family.” He slips the knife from his belt and offers it to me. “Honestly, of the two, that’s the bit I’d put more faith in.”

I look at the knife in his hand. He’s right, of course, which makes me even angrier. If I don’t trust Peeta to feed Mom and Prim – to say nothing of his promises of warm clothes and a new home – then I had no business making the deal with him. And the truth is: I have no reason not to trust him. Peeta’s well-spoken, persuasive even, but that doesn’t make him a liar.

“Yes,” I mutter. “I trust him. It’s just –”

He sheathes the knife again. “Survival instinct. I know.”

He brings a hand to my cheek. It’s a startlingly tender gesture for him. “I don’t like this, but I don’t have to,” he murmurs. “I get it, you know. Making a deal – and it’s a hell of a deal – to save your family.”

“Would you do it?” I blurt. “If it was you –”

He nods, smiling slightly. “It would be a different situation entirely if it were me, but: yes. If someone – someone good and decent – offered to take care of Mom and the kids and all I had to do in return was live with that person…hell yeah, I’d do it.”

I lunge forward to hug him and he wraps his arms around me in turn, chuckling softly. We’ve never hugged before – we’re not that sort of people, nor is ours that sort of friendship – but this moment seems to call for it. His assurance that I’ve made the right decision. The finality of never seeing him again.

As though reading my mind, Gale says, “You don’t need to be so final about it. I mean: what about school? He might get you out of that, but the Reaping?”

Somehow I hadn’t considered either of those factors. Surprised, I pull back a little to look at him. “He’ll have to bring you back for that,” he says, “and then he’ll be gone for a few weeks at the Games, mentoring the tributes, so he’ll probably let you stay with your family till he gets back. I mean, he’s hardly going to leave you alone in the woods for a month while he’s at the Capitol.”

I brighten a little at that. The next Reaping is a little over six months away. Six months isn’t so long, really.

“And heck, if we’re really lucky, we’ll get another Victor next year,” Gale says, grinning now. He smiles so seldom, it’s impossible not to grin back. “Then he’ll have to stay for all the recaps and parties _and_ go along on the Victory Tour.”

“Not so bad, then,” I joke.

“Not so bad,” he agrees, almost cheerfully. “And if he hurts you, I’ll kill him.”

I gasp. “Gale, no!” It’s absolutely the right thing to say in a situation like this, but with Gale it isn’t just words. He has the fire, the skill to go after Peeta and kill him at the slightest rumor of my mistreatment. I don’t expect it – a Victor who cradled his cruelest opponent in his dying moments would hardly hire a companion at ridiculous cost simply to starve and beat her – but the idea of entering into this bargain with Gale’s threat hanging over Peeta makes me feel sick, not reassured.

“He won’t,” he says stiffly, as though convincing himself as much as me. “I know he won’t. I just…had to say it.”

I nod. It’s not a retraction, but it takes away some of the force of the threat. “Thank you,” I say. I start to hug him again – I’m no good at this physical affection thing – but he gently pushes me away.

“Go on,” he says gruffly. “You need to pack.”

I laugh at the very idea. “That’ll take five minutes.”

“And, y’know, if you really see this as an end-all, leave-your-family-forever-in-order-to-save-them sort of thing, you should probably say goodbye to some people.”

I frown. He laughs this time. “I know it’s not in your nature, being friendly,” he teases. “But believe it or not, there are people who will miss you when you’re gone. And you’ve got until suppertime, with only five minutes of packing to do.”

I pull a face at him, and he gives me a quick fierce hug, conceding defeat. “Until the Reaping,” we tell each other. He stays to hunt; I walk back home, considering his words.

 _Say goodbye_ …to whom? Greasy Sae? I haven’t sold her anything more substantial than bark or bones in a month. It would feel strange; wrong really, to go to the Hob, empty-handed, just to say hello – or rather, goodbye. Darius, the red-haired, flirtatious young Peacekeeper who tugs my braid and tries to steal kisses? I shudder at the thought.

I don’t have school friends; don’t have friends at all, really, except the Hawthornes. _And Madge, maybe…?_ I shake my head. The mayor’s solitary golden daughter may join me at lunch and sit by me in class, but we don’t talk – not much at all, and not like female friends are supposed to, about clothes and weekend plans and the boys they like. And our relationship outside of school consists of brief, furtive visits to her back door to sell the strawberries her father loves. No, Madge will not miss me. She’ll find herself alone at lunch, but not for long, and Gale will be around in spring with her strawberries. Gale’s wrong. There are no goodbyes to say, even if I wanted to say them.

Returning to the Seam, I meet Peeta’s father and brother in the street outside my house. Both are big, broad-shouldered men, hulking and even more bearlike than Peeta in their dark, heavy winter coats. They’re laden down with parcels; the baker carries a massive hamper and his son three large wrapped bundles and a bucket brimming with coal. I manage not to gape.

The brother greets me first. “Hey, Katniss,” he says, grinning. The expression is far more at home on his cheerful face than Gale’s. I don’t know his name, but I think he’s the oldest, the one out of school. He’s rosier-skinned than Peeta; his round cheeks bear a perpetual flush, and the curls peeping out from under his stocking cap – like his eyebrows and eyelashes – are palest blond, almost white.

“Good morning, Katniss,” the baker says, smiling warmly in turn. “Have we come too early?”

I think of the pine bark I nearly brought home and shame threatens to choke me. “No,” I tell him, and open the door a crack to call, “Prim! Mom! Company!” before letting the Mellarks in.

Prim is standing at one end of the table with my foraging bag and a few knickknacks. The mug Peeta used last night – _my_ mug, technically. Our family’s plant book. Frowning, I add my bow and sheath of arrows to the pile, then tug off my outerwear and drape it over the back of a chair.

My sister looks up in delight – at our guests more than their gifts, I realize. “Mr. Mellark!” she chirps. “Marko!”

“Hey, Prim,” the brother – Marko – says back. He slips the wrapped parcels onto the table and ruffles her hair affectionately with his free hand.

“Hello, Prim,” the baker says, hefting the hamper onto the table. It groans in protest.

The baker always has a smile for Prim, but there’s something eager, almost mischievous in it today. He tugs off his stocking cap and gloves and tucks them into his coat pockets. His thick ash-blond hair, grown out for the winter and curling at the ends, is heavily silvered, but it’s startling how much he looks like an older, taller Peeta.

“What _is_ all this?” Prim asks, gesturing at the parcels.

“Call it a thank-you gift,” Marko laughs. “A little something to tide you over till you move into the new place.” He carries the coal bucket into the living room and begins expertly building up the fire. “We’re gonna be neighbors, you know,” he says, grinning broadly at her over his shoulder.

 _Neighbors._ They’re moving into town – town proper, the Merchant sector. Blind panic crushes my chest. _They can’t._ The scrawny, dirt-poor Everdeens living among Merchants…but no. _I_ won’t be there. I’m the real Everdeen. The coal miner’s daughter, the Seam brat. Mom’s a blonde Merchant’s daughter, and Prim looks just like her. They’ll be two pretty golden heads among the rest, and everyone likes them already.

“Now, before we go any further, I’ve been charged with a rather important piece of business,” the baker says. His voice is solemn but his blue eyes are practically sparkling. “Prim, could I borrow you for a minute?”

“Sure.” She comes over to him, wide-eyed and curious. “What do you need?”

He opens one of the parcels and takes out a pair of soft, fawn-colored boots, high-lacing and lined with fleece. “I need to make sure these fit,” he says, quite seriously, but mirth is tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Peeta would never forgive me if I didn’t make you try them on.”

Prim gives a squeal of delight and perches on the chair, tugging off her shoes without untying them. The baker loosens the boot laces with his big hands, then crouches to help Prim slip the boots on and laces them up again snugly. She stands at his prompting and he gently prods the toes with his thumb; they’re a good fit, almost perfect.

“They’re beautiful,” she breathes, lifting one booted leg and wiggling the foot experimentally. Marko, who has moved on to the kitchen fire, peers out at her with a grin. “But why did Peeta buy me boots?”

“Because you needed them,” I croak. My throat is tight and dry.

I know what’s in the next parcel before the baker opens it, but still I catch my breath. It’s a knee-length coat of fine, cranberry-colored wool, embroidered at the cuffs and lapels with tiny birds and flowers. Even Peeta’s family doesn’t have coats this fine; his father’s and brother’s coats are well-worn and patched at the elbows.

The baker helps Prim – who is practically dancing with glee – into the coat and buttons it closed. Like the boots, it’s a good fit; slightly large on her thin frame, but if she gains back the weight she’s lost to hunger – and from the looks of the hamper, that’s the intent – it will fit perfectly. The color is striking against her fair skin and blonde braid, the embroidery the perfect touch of whimsy for a sweet little girl – no, young woman. The length gives her height, elegance – and, of course, extra warmth. There isn’t a better coat for Prim in the world.

“I need to show Vick and Rory!” she exclaims. “I’ll be right back!” She gives the baker a spontaneous hug and barrels out the door.

“Wait – no!” I protest. “She can’t go out like that! She’ll get picked on; someone will ruin –”

The baker nods to his son, who is already leaving the kitchen to follow Prim. “Peeta anticipated there might be…teasing,” he assures me. “Bullying, even, at your family’s good fortune. Delly Cartwright’s agreed to keep an eye on Prim at school, and Marko and I will look out for her the rest of the time.”

I envision Peeta’s brother, lurking protectively behind Prim like a bulky shadow. Had Peeta thought of everything?

“These are blankets,” the baker goes on, gesturing at the third and largest wrapped parcel. “Peeta guessed that you might be…cold at night.” I wonder if this was Peeta’s diplomatic way of saying that Prim and I slept on the floor in front of the fire.

“But I imagine you care more about this,” he says, smiling again as he opens the hamper. It’s packed to the brim.

I bend to look inside and my nose is assaulted by the most delicious smells I’ve ever encountered. I take out a small basket of eggs, carefully placed on top, and then draw away layers of cotton napkins to discover apples, pink and firm and mouthwateringly tart at a sniff. A dark green acorn squash. Warm bakery bread and a block of butter. A round yellow cheese. A tin of tea, dark and malty and fresher than any I’ve seen before. A package of sausages, fragrant with herbs, and a whole cold roast chicken. Beneath that are small sacks of flour and oats, and at the bottom is a bottle of milk and a dark, dense, round cake, staggeringly rich with the scent of ginger and molasses, accompanied by a piping hot crock of some sort of custard. Tucked strategically near the crock is a small honeypot. I peer at the contents needlessly; the honey is warm and fluid, like pale liquid gold.

In my mind, I’m frantically calculating the cost. I would need a squirrel, probably two, for the bread alone. A wild turkey might cover the chicken but not necessarily the sausages as well. The cake and custard would break me. There’s nothing I could catch, kill – or do – to pay for something that exorbitant.

“Peeta did the baking himself,” the baker says. “It’s a busy day for him; I don’t know how he found the time.” He looks at me curiously, a smile playing about his generous mouth, and my face crumples. He pulls me into his arms.

I haven’t been held by a man since my father died. I start to sob. “Shh, Katniss, it’s all right,” he murmurs. I’d thought Peeta’s hands were big, but one of the baker’s hands covers the entire back of my head, cradling my face against his chest as I soak his coat with my tears.

I’m glad Prim isn’t here to see this. How would I explain these tears? _No one’s ever been this kind to us before?_ No – someone has. Five years ago. Lifesaving bread – the hope of survival – and now this. A feast, of the kind of food we could only ever dream about. What had I expected? A few eggs and a little flour? Stale surplus from the bakery?

The baker draws back a little to take my face in his large hands. “You have no idea, do you?” he whispers.

I don’t even try to process this. “If we cut tiny slivers,” I sniffle, “a-and freeze the rest, we can –”

“Katniss, this food is for _today_ ,” he interrupts, his voice as gentle as his touch. “There will be more tomorrow. Tonight, even, if you want.”

I open my mouth to say _No no no_ , _this is far too much already,_ when the baker looks over my shoulder and says, “Hello, Alys.”

It takes me several moments to realize he’s addressing my mother. Alyssum, the apothecary’s daughter, named for the low-growing plant with its tiny, delicate purple or white blossoms. _Alyssum – what’s it good for?_ she’d asked as a child. _Nothing,_ her mother had laughed. _Oldwives’ charms. Luck, perhaps. And for looks, of course._

I move away from the baker to see Mom standing in the bedroom doorway, looking uncomfortable. I can’t think why; we have visitors at all hours, when our house and our appearances are in far messier a state. She’s wearing her nicest brown cardigan over the pretty pink dress with a velvet collar from her apothecary days. It’s been made over, of course, but is still finer than anything else she owns. Her hair is braided neatly in a coil at the back of her head.

“Hello, Janek,” she says.

She knew the baker was coming over this morning; she would’ve heard me shout when we arrived. I wonder vaguely why she didn’t leave the bedroom until now.

“You’ve been ill,” the baker says softly. There’s an unexpected familiarity, an intimacy, in his voice – in his whole manner toward her.

“Not for a while now,” she demurs. “Just…well, hungry.”

I feel suddenly, strongly, the need to disappear into the kitchen. It reminds me of Sunday afternoons when I was little, when my dad and Gale’s would share a pipe and discuss hunting, Peacekeepers, or the state of Panem. When their talk turned too seditious – to things it might be fatal for children to repeat, however innocently – our mothers would chase us outside to play.

I can’t think why this moment should remind me of that. No one’s asking me to leave or even pointedly implying that I should. What could Peeta’s dad and my mom have to discuss outside my hearing? _The “arrangements_ ,” I realize, the particular details of the bargain with Peeta, but surely I’m a part of that?

The silence in the room grows uncomfortable. I hastily repack the hamper as best I can and lug it into the kitchen; the baker offers to help but I shrug away his assistance. I’ve decided to split the food with the Hawthornes. There’s far too much of it for the three of us; there are five of them, living on just as little as we have been – less, even, since their Parcel Day and tesserae portions have further to stretch. Hazelle won’t want charity, but even Gale can’t bring home food that isn’t there.

I cut the roast chicken in half but can’t resist tearing a chunk from the breast and shoving it into my mouth. It’s so good – savory, clean, perfectly seasoned – that I start to cry all over again. I wrap the untouched half in one of the napkins and set it aside. Half for us, half for Gale’s family. I do the same with the sausages, bread, squash, cheese, and cake, devouring any crumbs and even licking the knife when I’m done. The liquids and tea are too difficult to split, but I set aside half of the apples and eggs for the Hawthornes as well.

As I work, I catch murmured snatches of Mom’s conversation with the baker. “Your son…” Mom says. I miss the next bit, but she finishes with, “my daughter.”

“Are you surprised?” the baker asks. His voice is a quiet rumble, jarringly foreign in this houseful of silent women.

I discover a dusty basket in a long-disused cupboard and begin to pack it with the Hawthornes’ half of the feast.

“Peeta’s a good boy, Alys,” the baker tells her.

“I know.”

“He was looking out a property before you said yes,” he says. I pause in my work, puzzled by this bit of news. A few hesitant seconds later, he adds, “Before your girl said yes.”

Just then I hear Prim burst through the front door, bubbling over with excitement. “Mom, look what Peeta bought for me! Aren’t they beautiful?”

I curse silently. I’d hoped she’d come quietly through the back door, into the kitchen, so I could send her out again with the basket for the Hawthornes. Marko would still be shadowing her, no doubt, but he could hardly stop me sharing his brother’s gifts.

I wash and dry my hands and return to the living room. Prim is hugging Mom, who runs a hand over the wool of her new coat in wonder. The baker smiles at them from the opposite side of the table, but there’s something like sadness in his eyes. The door opens again to admit Marko, even redder-cheeked than usual from the cold and exertion of chasing a giddy twelve-year-old around the Seam.

“Are you staying to eat?” I ask, a ridiculous question, but the situation seems to call for an invitation.

The baker shakes his head. “We need to get back. Luka’s not at his best on Saturday mornings.” Luka – that must be the other brother. The wrestler, the one still in school. “Another time, though.”

“Yes,” Mom answers, almost – _almost_ – smiling. The baker smiles back. Again, there’s that strange hum of familiarity between them.

“Good day to you, Alys. Prim,” he says, nodding to each of them in turn. “And –” His bright eyes catch mine and soften. “Thank you, Katniss.”

“Yes, thank you, Katniss,” Marko echoes with a smile.

I frown, wondering if these gentle, genuine Mellarks could be mocking me. They’ve just brought us coal, blankets, a mountain of food, and expensive winter clothing for Prim…and they’re thanking _me_? I look at the baker – scowl, really – and he nods slowly. No mocking, then. But what on earth could he have to thank me for?

I think of the bargain, of Peeta’s words last night. _I’m lonely, Mrs. Everdeen…My brothers don’t want to leave town, and my father needs them at the bakery, now that I’m gone…_

Maybe it’s as simple as that. Peeta’s isolated from his family at his Victor’s Residence, and they’re grateful for anyone willing and able to keep him company. “Um…you’re welcome, I guess,” I reply, thinking of the bounty in our kitchen and feeling ridiculous.

With a few more pleasantries, the baker and his son take their leave, and I return to the kitchen to assemble a feast for my family.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: In writing this chapter, I developed a huge – HUGE – crush on Peeta’s dad. (I read aloud selected excerpts for my sister with a big stupid grin on my face.) I was planning on developing a bit of backstory with him and Katniss’s mom but figured it would be pretty low-key and insignificant. Halfway into the next chapter (you’ll see what I mean when you get there), I realized they needed their own fic. (I never should have named them! That was where all the trouble started!) No ETA on that one just yet, though…
> 
> Oh, and: not sure why the Mellarks lended toward Slavic names, but it seemed to fit so well. I came across a Luka and a Marko in two different HG fics (my apologies to whoever introduced the names on FF.net – I’ve been unable to locate the fics I read and thank you personally); the character looks, personalities, etc. are my own, though the names are borrowed. “Janek” was the result of a very long web search (and, in my humble opinion, sexy but appropriate for a baker/father of three/man in his early 40s!).


	3. Leaving Home

_She washed and mended her clothes, which were rags, and made herself as smart as she could.  
__Then she placed all she had in a bundle and awaited her fate.  
_ ~ _East of the Sun and West of the Moon,_ retold by Kathleen and Michael Hague

After the baker and his son leave, we spend the better part of the next two hours eating. We start with tiny portions – a slice of bread with butter, a few bites of chicken, a tiny sliver of ginger cake with a spoonful of custard – and try to be decorous, but we’re so hungry and everything tastes so good that we take seconds and thirds and fourths of everything in increasingly larger portions. I bake the squash and apples; we drizzle both with butter and honey and scoop the hot flesh from the skin with spoons. We burn our tongues and laugh till we cry, even Mom.

I bribe Prim with hot, milky tea to run the basket of food over to the Hawthornes’; much as I want to share, I’m not up to explanations, especially for the bounty of food. When she comes back, I’m slicing up a sausage and some cheese for another round; I even boil an egg because it sounds so good.

We strip the half-chicken clean of meat and I set the bones, fat, and gristle simmering for stock, tossing a few bites of skin to a surprisingly appreciative Buttercup in the process. I regret that we didn’t save a little meat to use in the resulting soup but decide that the sausages will make a fine – and more savory – substitute.

Although everything tastes amazing – and better still for our hunger – we sigh with pleasure over the ginger cake and custard most of all. “Do you think Peeta will bake things like this for you when you’re at his house?” Prim wonders wistfully. “You’d be the luckiest girl in the district.”

“The best fed, certainly,” I chuckle. I doubt I’ll eat this well again, but Prim and Mom certainly will. _Call it a thank-you gift,_ Marko had said. _A little something to tide you over till you move into the new place._ Yes, if this is only a sample of the treatment they are to expect, Mom and Prim will be round-limbed and healthy in no time.

I’m halfway through my third slice of ginger cake when Madge arrives, a small bundle in hand. “Gale said you were leaving and wouldn’t come to say goodbye,” she says, seating herself opposite me at the table.

I silently curse Gale as colorfully as I know how. What was he doing at the mayor’s house anyway? It's a good six months to strawberry time, and he'd have nothing else to trade. “Well…I wasn’t planning on it,” I admit.

“Why not?” she asks. “I thought we were friends.”

 _Are we?_ I wonder, a little giddy at her use of the term. “Well…we are, I suppose,” I say.

“Good.” Without further preamble, she leans over to snatch the last bite of cake from my plate and pops it into her mouth. “Mmm,” she sighs. “Did Peeta make that – or was it his dad?”

“Peeta,” I tell her, and she gives me a sly grin. “Lucky girl,” she teases. “Anyway, I thought you might need something nice to wear for your trip.” She shifts the bundle onto the table – it turns out to be a pillowcase – and takes out a dark purple sweater, finely woven, with little silver buttons down the front; a pair of soft black leggings – soft by nature, not from countless washings – that would tuck neatly into my boots; and a matching long-sleeved undershirt.

I know this outfit. I’ve seen – and admired – it on Madge more than once. It’s ridiculously Merchant-class – I wouldn’t dare show my face in town in it – but it would be fitting – and warm – for the ride to Peeta’s house.  But I can’t. “Madge, I can’t take your clothes!” I protest.

“Of course you can. I know what you own, Katniss,” she says frankly. “You can’t move in with a Victor wearing your dad’s old sweater and corduroys.” I look down at what I’m wearing and blush.

“I thought about bringing something dressier,” she adds, “but I figured you’d want something practical and warm, and anyway: you look good in purple.” She smiles genuinely at me. “It makes your eyes look smoky and mysterious.”

If I’m honest, Madge’s gift has provided an ideal solution to the latest conflict between Mom and me. While I was in the woods this morning, Mom took out and pressed the blue dress I wore for last year’s Reaping. For Peeta’s Reaping. It’s one of Mom’s from her apothecary days and – as Prim insists over and over again – it looked pretty on me last summer. As it’s one of the finest things in our collective wardrobe, Mom thought I should wear it for the trip to Peeta’s house.

I don’t want to remember that day and certainly don’t want to remind Peeta of it. 

It’s hard to imagine a more awful Reaping, short of myself or Prim being called. The girl tribute had been Larkspur Collins, thirteen years old, the grocer’s beloved granddaughter. A Merchant girl, all shiny shoes and blonde braids – and a school friend of Prim’s. That had been horrible enough. I was pushing my way through the crowd to console my sister when Peeta’s name was called.

Peeta being Reaped shouldn’t have struck me as exceptionally sad or tragic. We weren’t friends or neighbors – anything at all, really. Since he’d thrown me the bread that saved my life, we hadn’t exchanged so much as a word, not even in class. But as he walked up to the platform, all I could think was that I’d never get to thank him now.

Prim, inconsolable, wanted to say goodbye to Larkspur, so we went to the Justice Building. She cried through both of her handkerchiefs and one of mine on the way. Once inside, Prim – tiny, fragile, birdlike Prim – marched bravely up to the nearest Peacekeeper, who directed us to the proper hallway.

I’d never gone to say goodbye to a tribute before, but the atmosphere of subdued weeping was exactly what I would’ve expected. A pair of armed Peacekeepers guarded two doors, one on each side of the hallway; in-between were benches where friends and family lingered, red-eyed, hoping they’d see their loved one taken to the train before the Peacekeepers forced them to clear out. Prim ran to a group of identically pigtailed blonde girls to exchange hugs and tears.

I propped myself against the wall, feeling awkward. I barely knew Larkspur, except through Prim, and Peeta had had a group of visitors already, by the looks of things. I’d narrowly avoided his mother and brothers on our way in, and several of his friends filled the benches. The only one I knew by name was sweet, plain Delly Cartwright, who was leaning on her little brother, her plump cheeks flushed and wet with tears.

Something stirred in my chest, something uncomfortable and a bit like guilt. Peacekeepers would give anyone a few minutes with a tribute, provided Effie Trinket wasn’t clamoring for an immediate departure. This was my absolute last chance to thank Peeta for the bread. He was strong, fit and healthy, but a survivor? Even if he avoided the Cornucopia and hid out as long as possible, I doubted he’d last more than three days in the arena.

A fair-haired young couple – Larkspur’s parents – emerged from one of the rooms, weeping silently, and the Peacekeeper at the door briskly waved Prim over. She went inside and my chest began to burn. Two minutes – five at the most. Two minutes and Prim would come back and we would go home. Two minutes and I’d never see Peeta Mellark again. I wondered madly if I’d feel less bad for not thanking him if I never saw him again.

“Katniss?”

I looked up, startled, at the sound of my name. The baker – Peeta’s father – had just come out of the room opposite Larkspur’s. His usually cheerful face was tear-streaked and haggard with grief – and, it seemed, stunned at the sight of me. “You’ve come to see Peeta?” he said.

“Um…I…” I floundered. I could hardly say no, but I’d never been good at lying.

The baker gave me a strange look through his tears. It seemed almost grateful. “Please, go in,” he said, gesturing back at the door. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

The Peacekeeper outside Peeta’s door was already waving me over, and I could feel the curious eyes of the other visitors. There was no escaping it. I went up to the Peacekeeper, trembling a little; he opened the door and gave me a firm nudge inside.

The room was small but startlingly luxurious, with velvet-upholstered furniture and thick, plush carpet underfoot. Peeta was sitting on the sofa, barely six feet away, his eyes wide as I approached. Those bright Merchant eyes were red-rimmed with crying, and the thing in my chest clenched hard.

“Katniss,” he said. I’d never heard Peeta say my name before. I wasn’t even sure if he knew it. “You came to say goodbye?” His voice was almost hopeful.

“No,” I blurted stupidly. “I just…um…I came with Prim to see Larkspur.”

“Oh.”

I dropped my gaze to the floor. There was enough disappointment in that lone syllable; I didn’t need to see it in his face. Why hadn’t I at least _pretended_ to care? Could I be any more horrible to the boy who’d saved my life?

“They’re…they’re good friends, right?” Peeta asked, filling the painful silence. I nodded without looking up. “I’ll try to keep an eye on her,” he said. “In the…arena, I mean.”

“Um…thanks,” I said, flashing a quick glance up at him. He was staring at me, hard, as though he was trying to figure something out. “I’ll…um…I’ll be sure to tell Prim. It’ll make her happy.”

He gave a sudden sniffle and I looked up, pulling the last clean handkerchief from my dress pocket. This, at least, was something I couldn’t get wrong. “Here,” I said awkwardly, offering it to him.

It wasn’t a proper handkerchief, but then, we didn’t have many of those. Mom had a few from her apothecary days; tiny, delicate squares of linen, embroidered with her initials and flowering herbs. She kept them carefully tucked away in a drawer with Dad’s old pocket handkerchiefs.

After Dad died, Prim and I were on our own for everything – “frivolities” like handkerchiefs no less than food and clothes and fuel for the fires. I ended up improvising: cutting squares from our old dresses, the ones that were too worn to trade – I’d learned that bitter lesson with the baby clothes – or even to give to Gale’s mother for Posy.

What I offered to Peeta was a piece of red plaid cotton, roughly the size of a pocket handkerchief, clumsily hemmed and faded from many washings. Peeta took it, his expression strangely touched, as though I had given him something precious. “Thank you, Katniss,” he said softly. He pocketed his own crumpled handkerchief and gratefully wiped his eyes and nose with mine.

 _Thank you, Katniss?_ _No no no!_ _I_ was supposed to be thanking _him_ – thanking him for saving my life! Why was it all going wrong? “Peeta…” I choked.

His bright, wet eyes met mine encouragingly. He tried to smile.

My throat closed up. I couldn’t say it. How could I? I waited _five years_ , five years of evading glances, of not even saying hello. I _couldn’t_ say it now. “I, um –”

I heard a door open into the hallway, a Peacekeeper’s gruff murmur, and Prim’s quiet sobs. “I-I have to go,” I stammered and – in a burst of madness – stepped forward to kiss Peeta on the cheek. I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know why I did. I’d never kissed any part of a boy in my life.

“Katniss…” he whispered.

I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to hear whatever else this too-kind boy thought he should say to me. I ran blindly from the room, crashing into the Peacekeeper just outside the door, found Prim, grabbed her by the hand, and rushed us both out of the building.

I took Prim home, filled her with fish stew and strawberries, and tucked her into bed with a chamomile compress over her eyes. Then I went out to the woods and cried.

No, I don’t want to wear that blue dress again, and I can’t tell Mom why. I can’t even tell Prim. I can barely admit it to myself.

“Thanks,” I tell Madge. “I really like the clothes, and I’d love to wear them to Peeta’s tonight.”

Mom, who has been hovering ever since Madge opened her bundle, shrugs and heads for the kitchen. “Tea, Madge?” she asks.

“Yes, thank you.”

“And toast!” Prim thinks aloud, hopping up in her enthusiasm. “Toast with bread and honey! We’ll have a real tea!” She follows Mom into the kitchen.

Madge watches Prim, her expression thoughtful. “Peeta’s taking really good care of your family already,” she says. “Last time I was here, you gave me steeped mint leaves and told me not to take my coat off; now it’s roaring fires in every room and tea and toast and cake.” She sniffs. “And chicken soup, I think?”

“He’s been…well, unbelievably generous,” I admit. “He bought Prim an expensive winter coat and boots just because I said she needed new ones.” Something stings in my eyes; I wipe at them impatiently, hoping it isn’t more tears. “I wasn’t even talking to him; I was yelling at Mom, but he must’ve been paying attention. He…he remembered everything I said,” I recall, my voice a little shaky. “The hamper he sent over – it had everything we were out of, and more besides.”

Madge looks at me for a long moment, then her eyes flicker toward the kitchen doorway. As though she’s deciding something.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small amber bottle. “Here,” she says quietly, pressing it into my hand. “They’re Mom’s, from the Capitol. She doesn’t need them anymore.”

“Headache pills?” I frown, speaking at a normal volume. “Why –?”

“Shh!” she hisses. “Not headache pills. These’ll keep you from getting pregnant.”

Something roars thickly in my head, like the coal train at top speed, only my ears are stuffed with cotton. The world is suddenly muted and blurry; Madge’s pale face swims before my eyes. “What?” I croak.

“Well, aren’t you…?” She trails off and my vision begins to clear. Madge looks genuinely confused. “Well, um…” She gestures at the bottle in my hand. “If you want them –”

“I don’t,” I snap, my cheeks burning as I push the pills back into her hand. It’s beginning to anger me now, this assumption that Peeta just wants me in his bed and is bringing me to his house for that express purpose. I saw his blushes; I know better. “He doesn’t _want_ that,” I tell her crossly, “and I’m sick and tired of people suggesting otherwise!”

Of course, I still don’t have the slightest clue what he _does_ want from me, but I know it’s not my body. Peeta was desirable enough before he won the Games. A blond Merchant boy, a wrestler, a baker’s son; he could’ve had practically any girl he wanted. Tack a Victor’s wealth and fame onto that, and no one would say no to him.

No, if there’s anyone in Twelve that Peeta wants, he’s already had her. I’m not sure why that thought makes me feel a little sick.

Madge pockets the pills again, looking miserable and a little mortified. “Okay,” she says. “I…um…I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Mom and Prim return with a hastily dusted tray, loaded with our teapot and three battered mugs, milk, honey, butter, and perfectly toasted slices of Peeta’s bread. Madge stays for a little, but it’s clear she’s still embarrassed from her fumble with the pills. Once she’s finished her tea, she gives me a quick hug and tells me not to worry about getting the clothes back to her.

It seems a good time to take my bath. Prim and I fill all the kettles – minus the simmering stockpot of chicken bones – with cold water from the tap and set them on the stove to boil. Mom disappears into the bedroom and returns to give me a small square of lavender-colored soap, embossed with a lacy design. It smells, faintly but distinctly, of lilacs and licorice – no, not licorice. Sweet cicely. Mom’s favorite herb. She prescribes it for everything from coughs to infected wounds to digestive complaints, and we use it at home in place of sugar to sweeten things, but in the old days, Dad said – her days working in the apothecary shop with her parents – she used to wear it. She loved the scent so much she blended it into perfumes, powders, soaps; anything she could think of.

A bar of soap scented with sweet cicely…Mom either made this, twenty years ago, or had it made for her. I realize it must have come from her drawer of precious things: the handkerchiefs, little gifts from Dad, the dresses from her apothecary days. I wonder what made her take it out now, let alone share it with me.

The kettles begin to boil, and as I dump them into the tub, Mom comes over to add oatmeal – our last cup, ground to powder – and a sprinkle of lavender to the water. The lavender is exorbitant enough; the oatmeal would have made a meal for at least two of us. I look at her as though she’s lost her mind. “Mom, w-what are you…that’s _food_!” I sputter, indignant.

She shrugs. “We’ve more now. And it’s a special occasion.”

I shake my head. I’d always wondered if she’d gone mad after Dad died. Giving me the soap she’s kept for twenty years, adding oatmeal to my bath…maybe she really _has_ lost it.

I add a pot of cold water to the steaming tub and am about to undress when another knock comes at the door. More goodbyes? I groan and follow Mom out of the kitchen to find Prim chatting animatedly with Marko. He’s carrying yet another parcel, though this one is significantly smaller than the ones from this morning and is wrapped in paper – from the bakery, I realize.

“Hi, Katniss, Mrs. Everdeen,” he says cheerfully. “Was just checking in to see if you wanted any more food before tomorrow. Dad said you might be…concerned.”

I remember the baker’s gentle words from this morning as he cradled my face in his hands. _There will be more tomorrow. Tonight, even, if you want._

I take the parcel, overcome yet again by the Mellarks’ quiet generosity – at least, some of the Mellarks. Suddenly, I’m haunted by the image of an eleven-year-old Peeta with a bruised cheek and black eye. “Marko, how does your mother feel about…all this?” I ask.

He shrugs, noncommittal. “She isn’t thrilled, but Peeta paid her in advance for the next three months. Not a whole lot she can do about it.”

I nod, unsure whether to be relieved or confused by this, and open the parcel. It contains six rolls – the light golden sweet ones that we could never, ever afford, still warm from the oven – and three delicate sugar cookies, beautifully pale and dusted with pink sugar. “The rolls are mine; cookies are Dad’s,” Marko explains. “Sorry,” he adds to me, his bright eyes teasing. “Your boy’s got his hands full.”

For reasons beyond my comprehension, I blush.

“It’s all right, though,” he says, grinning. “Cakes are really his strong suit. And after tonight, you’ll have all the Peeta baking you could ever want. You’ll be sick to death with it.”

Prim giggles. I begin to wonder whether I mightn’t have been better off ignoring Marko’s knock and getting in the tub. “Anyway, we’re fine,” I tell him. “We’ve got plenty left from this morning –” a small lie – “and we’re making a nice soup stock from the chicken bones.”

“Soup stock?” He raises his pale brows. The scent has just caught up to him. “You’ll be wanting onions and carrots then?”

Well, I’d stepped neatly into that one. I open my mouth to protest when Mom answers for me. “It’ll keep till tomorrow,” she tells him. “If – that is – if you’re planning a delivery tomorrow, I’ll take some root vegetables then.”

Marko nods brightly, pleased with this answer. “First thing after the morning rush. Onions, carrots, potatoes.” He turns for the door, only to turn back again with an exclamation. “Oh, almost forgot!” He takes a large paper pouch out of his coat pocket and hands it to Mom. “Mrs. Everdeen: Dad says he recalls how fond you are of coffee.”

This surprises all of us, Mom included – not that she loves coffee, which we can almost never afford, but that the baker knew of it. She unfolds the top of the pouch and closes her eyes as she inhales the aromatic contents. “Oh!” she gasps, her eyes wide.

I step in for a closer look and sniff. It’s not the paltry coffee drunk by the Seam families who can afford it. It’s not even the expensive coffee from the grocer’s. That is, it _is_ Merchant-grade coffee, but there are bits of toasted nuts and spices mixed with the beans. It’s like no coffee I’ve ever seen before.

“Ja – Mr. Mellark – used to make this all the time when he was on earlies with his father,” she tells us – and she laughs. Truly, honestly, genuinely _laughs_. Before today, I hadn’t heard her laugh in five years. “He could never wake up,” she says, shaking her head, her eyes dancing with mirth. It’s like watching a complete stranger; a vibrant, animated Merchant woman. “He stole the spices from the bakery stores. It made his dad furious – and of course, it made the coffee grinder taste like cinnamon. And he added the almonds because –”

She breaks off abruptly. It’s like a curtain falls behind her eyes, and she’s washed-out, grief-worn Widow Everdeen again. “Please thank him for me, Marko,” she says. Her voice is a little stilted.

Marko and I exchange puzzled glances, both at Mom’s strange fragment of memory and her wild shifts in mood. Maybe she finally _has_ gone mad. “Will do,” he says at last. “Good afternoon to you all.”

I go directly back to the kitchen, ignoring my flabbergasted sister and silent, subdued mother. I can’t begin to wrap my mind around what just happened, and I don’t want to. I pin an old sheet over the kitchen doorway – I’m not leaving this room again until I’ve bathed, no matter who comes to call – then I peel out of my rough clothes, unbraid my hair, and sink into the tub.

The oat water is silky and soothing to my flaky winter skin. I sigh appreciatively; for a madwoman, Mom had one very good idea, at least. I dunk my head under till my black hair is saturated and lather the length of it with the fragrant purple soap.

I think about Madge, who brought me clothes – and Capitol-grade birth control pills, though I ignore that for the moment. She says we’re friends; maybe we have been all along. Now I think of it, she’s been involved in my life quite a bit during the last six months – or, more particularly, the last Games. The day of the Tribute Parade, she came by the house to ask if I was going to the square to watch it.

The Tribute Parade is the one part of the Games that people in Twelve almost enjoy. It’s the one part of the Games that – usually – isn’t full of death and violence or even discussion thereof. There’s always one district to ooh and ah over, one district whose costumes are just normal enough that the tailor’s daughter shows up at the Harvest Festival in a passable replica, and a vast number of districts that are laughably ghastly. Of course, Twelve is usually one of the latter, but we hold our laughter out of respect for our doomed friends.

Ordinarily, like most of the district, I would go to the square to watch the parade. The huge screens with their sharp definition give a grand show – it’s hardly worth watching the parade if you’re watching from home. But this year was different. I didn’t want to see Peeta Mellark dressed pathetically in a miner’s jumpsuit – or a skimpy semblance of one – or, worse yet, naked and covered in coal dust. But Prim wanted to see Larkspur, and Madge was offering to tag along with us. I considered warning my sister about the possibility of her friend being televised naked but reminded myself that this wasn’t the first parade she’d ever seen, let alone the first Games. If it was _that_ bad, I could always cover her eyes.

They say the parade lasts about twenty minutes in reality, but the Capitol production crews always stretch it out into an hour of glitz, intercutting footage of each district’s costumes with stylist interviews and behind-the-scenes clips of the tributes. It’s a delayed broadcast, of course; they claim it’s so every citizen of Panem can get the full effect of the show, but we suspect it’s so the Capitol citizens who are rich enough to attend the parade in person can then go home and watch themselves on television. During the pre-show gossip – which consists of a panel of garishly painted minor celebrities, squawking and tittering about the show to come, like a row of brightly colored birds on a power line – one of the commentators teased the audience with a quote from Twelve’s stylists: “We’ve cleverly incorporated both the district’s industry and folk heritage into our costumes this year; we think the result will be spectacular.” The idea of celebrating our “folk heritage” – whatever _that_ was meant to be – was curious, but no one in Twelve was really holding their breath for anything “spectacular.”

When Twelve’s chariot finally approached in a haze of smoke, pulled by a pair of coal black horses, the Capitol crowds screamed. There were a few whoops and hollers in our square as well – pyrotechnics of any kind being a vast improvement on previous years – then a collective gasp as the tributes themselves came into view. The top halves of their bodies were gold, not simply metallic gold but dozens of different shades – browns, bronzes, even sandy yellows – spattered artfully over their flesh from waist to hairline, and from the waist down, they were dressed – _made_ , it seemed – of glowing coals. The smoke wreathing the chariot appeared to be rising from those coals, whose ruddy glow reflected off the tiny flickers of metallic gold on their upper bodies. It was entirely spectacular.

The screen cut to the stylists then: a slim young man, brown-haired, dusky-skinned, and very simply dressed in a sharply cut black suit, and a tall young woman, as like the man in appearance to be his sister, though her outfit – a heavily flounced black dress with gold accents – was more vibrant. Both were simply cosmeticked, the man wearing only gold eyeliner and the woman feathered eyelashes and an all-over shimmer of gold.

“Of course, Twelve is the coal mining district,” the woman – identified as Portia – said, “but they also have this beautiful folk ritual called a toasting, where a newly married couple builds a fire and toasts their first bread together.”

“We wanted to capture both the grit and the romance of this outlying district,” the man – Cinna – added. “And, of course, our male tribute this year is a baker’s son, which makes the toast image even more fitting.”

Heads in our square began to tilt and murmurs to build. Had the stylists really turned the tributes into _toast_? But how – and why didn’t they look more ridiculous?

The screen cut back to parade footage and closed in on Peeta – the more impressive of the two, with his muscular build – and I realized with a start that he was naked from the waist up. I had seen him in his wrestling uniform before – nearly as naked – but this was entirely different. His pale skin had been spackled with patterns of every imaginable shade of gold and brown, just like a perfectly toasted piece of bread, but far from ridiculous, it looked stunning. His thick blond hair was flecked with metallic gold and copper and bronze. His nipples were painted gold, his lips an earthy copper-brown, and his eyes traced with brown and gold, somehow making them look even bluer. The screen was so sharp that I could even see the downy pale gold hair on his chest and arms, which had been worked seamlessly into the multi-tonal palette of toast shades.

“Damn, he’s hot,” a girl whispered behind us in the crowd. Madge shot her a dirty look, but she was right. Peeta had always been a nice-looking boy, but made up like that, he was something else entirely. Older, stronger, fiercer. And almost unbelievably attractive.

The camera moved to Larkspur then and I nearly covered Prim’s eyes. Like most female tributes, she was dressed to match her district partner exactly, so she should’ve been half-naked as well – but no. Her very clever stylist had molded a flesh-colored bodice to her chest, subtle enough to deceive at a glance but thoughtfully tasteful in light of her age. Like Peeta, she was patterned with toast shades from waist to fingertips to hairline, her identical fair skin equally stunning. The flesh-toned bodice boosted her small breasts proudly, giving her the silhouette of a girl of fifteen – a projection only aided by her brown-shadowed eyes and towering sculpture of curls, her natural blonde intermingled, like Peeta’s, with gold and copper and bronze.

They cut to some prep footage then, to the tributes outside of the chariot, experimenting with the power packs that turned their hips and legs to glowing coals (which resulted in lots of Capitol screaming), then, while the stylists gave some commentary on the juxtaposition of coals and toast in their design, they showed a short clip of Peeta and Larkspur in a dressing room. Both wore the black leggings that would turn into coals – and little else. Peeta was shirtless and uncosmeticked (which resulted in even more Capitol screaming and a few suggestive whoops from the square of Twelve), and he was painting the subtle toast-like pattern on Larkspur’s flesh-colored bodice while her prep team looked on with interest (which resulted in _still_ more screaming and which, in my opinion, was the one thing we’d seen so far that merited real enthusiasm: Peeta Mellark could paint). Larkspur’s face and hair were still their natural color, though her hair was already piled up in curls.

“Larkspur!” Prim cried with real delight.

And that’s how the Capitol gets you. That one moment where you see the beauty in the Games, where you start to admire or even envy your district’s tributes. I almost shook her, reminded her of what was really going on, but…well, Prim was already wise beyond her years. She’d remember the horror all too soon.

In the meantime, neither of our tributes would have difficulty attracting sponsors. Even scrubbed free of makeup, Larkspur was a beauty, and Peeta…golden and muscular as he was in that chariot, he looked like a Career. The Gamemakers must have thought so too, because two nights later when their scores were revealed, Peeta pulled an impressive nine. Larkspur came out with a five.

Two nights after that came the interviews with Caesar Flickerman – the last part of the Games that anyone in Twelve can bear to watch, though not, of course, the last part that we’re made to watch. Madge invited us down to the square again, and I figured: why not? Let Prim have one last bright and beautiful memory of her friend before all the blood and blades and tears.

Larkspur was dressed – again, older than her years, though she had the poise and height to pull it off – in an elegant sheath-dress of cream-colored silk, overlaid with intricate brown and gold lace. Toast shades, the commentator explained, to remind viewers of the sweet, tender love this tragic young tribute might never experience. I wasn’t sure whether to be repelled by this appeal to Capitol sentiment or to applaud her stylist’s gumption in what could _almost_ be construed as a protest against the Capitol/cruelty of the Games. Caesar did well by her, as he does with all the tributes, talking her out of her nervousness with stories of family toastings and schoolyard crushes.

Peeta, in contrast, took the stage comfortably, as though he’d been born to it. He wore a sharply tailored black suit – at first glance, a flat, almost dusty coal black – but as he walked across the stage and the lights struck him fully, the black material threw off tiny copper sparks. Beneath the suit jacket he wore a shirt of pale, creamy gold – like the soft inside of fresh bakery bread, said the commentator – and a waistcoat patterned, toast-like, in copper, brown, and gold. Like the chariot costume, the pieces should have come together in a ridiculous whole, but instead the effect was stunningly attractive.

Caesar greeted him enthusiastically. “Welcome, Peeta! I think I speak for everyone here when I say that your appearance in the Tribute Parade was the most _delicious_ we’ve seen in quite a while.” The Capitol audience tittered wildly, men and women alike, though the joke fell painfully flat in Twelve. There wasn’t so much as a chuckle in our square at Caesar’s quip. “I imagine there isn’t a girl in District Twelve who wouldn’t want to be invited to _that_ toasting!” he teased.

The Capitol audience roared at the innuendo and Peeta laughed in turn, blushing. “I don’t usually show that much skin, Caesar,” he answered. “I was worried I might look a little underdone.” Everyone laughed at that, even the crowd in Twelve.

Caesar and Peeta went on to banter briefly about underdone bread and coal stoves and a baker’s occupational hazards. “Speaking of delicious,” Caesar said, “we were treated to a video clip a few nights ago suggesting that you helped design your look for the Tribute Parade.” The Capitol audience whooped with excitement. “Is there any truth in it?”

Peeta laughed again – not genuinely, but a very good imitation. “Well, I’ve been around more bread – more toast, probably, too – than most people in the Capitol. Cinna and Portia described what they were looking for; I created the spackle pattern for Larkspur and then the prep team copied it on me.”

“You’re an artist as well?” Caesar asked. The Capitol audience whooped even louder.

Peeta shrugged. “I dabble. I do the cakes, back home.”

“He bakes and paints _and_ has a sense of humor,” Caesar said to the audience. “Sounds like some lucky girl’s dream come true, eh?” The Capitol audience cheered, as did a handful of people in Twelve. Peeta’s friends, I guessed. Maybe the girl who’d watched the parade behind me and said he was hot.

Peeta smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes.

“Tell us, Peeta,” Caesar prompted. “A handsome charmer like you is bound to have a girl – or five or six – back home, am I right?” He laughed at his own joke. The Capitol audience – and the crowd in Twelve – waited with baited breath.

Peeta, to everyone’s surprise, shook his head. “There’s a girl,” he said slowly. “I’ve had a crush on her…” He hesitated a moment. “I’ve…loved her for as long as I can remember, but she, um…I don’t think she even knew I was alive until the Reaping.”

The Capitol audience gave a collective sad sigh. Standing between Prim and Madge in the midst of a rapt and silence district, something twisted in my gut.

“She have another fellow?” Caesar asked gently.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Peeta said. “She’s beautiful, and a lot of boys like her.”

A whisper started behind me, but my mind was preoccupied, flitting from one Merchant girl to the next. Peeta lived within a block of most of them. How could any of them – any girl in Twelve – not know he was alive?

Caesar leaned in confidentially. “I tell you what: you win this thing, you go home and sweep that girl off her feet. She can’t turn you down then, eh?” He grinned.

“Yeah,” Peeta said quietly. “That’s…sort of my plan, actually. To…win the Games. For her.”

The audience sighed dreamily. The thing in my gut twisted harder.

“Well, there you go.” Caesar gave Peeta a reassuring clap on the shoulder. “And if the asking doesn’t work, just break out the toast!”

The audience roared. Peeta blushed but managed a laugh, then shook hands with Caesar and returned to his seat in a flurry of copper sparks.

I think of Peeta’s hands – large, strong, warm, _clean_ – and scrub my nail beds almost raw in the bathwater. No matter what sort of work he has in mind for me, he won’t want grimy hands in his kitchen.

I soak for a long time, lost in my thoughts. Prim comes in and warms a fresh kettle of water to rinse my hair, and Mom stops back every few minutes to add more hot water, scrub my neck, or absently soap my back. When I’ve soaked for twenty minutes, she kneels beside the tub and fishes my feet and hands out of the water, one at a time, to trim my softened nails neatly with a tiny pair of scissors.

I’m self-conscious about nudity – mine or anyone else’s – but somehow, with Mom, it’s like I’m still a child. My breasts are small this winter, no wider than my palms and nearly as flat. I’m really no curvier than Prim.

My fingers are wrinkled and the water tepid when I finally decide to get out. Mom offers to help me; the tub is slippery from the oat powder, and I’m grateful for her assistance. She dries me off with a towel warmed by the fire and lightly dusts my body with powder from a pretty canister I’ve never seen before. It smells of sweet cicely and lavender; yet another item from her drawer of precious things.

“I always imagined I’d be doing this before your wedding,” Mom muses as she powders my back.

 _My_ _wedding?_ Yes, she _is_ mad. “And then you remembered that it’s me and there wouldn’t be a wedding ever,” I say, but there’s little venom in it. Mad or otherwise, she’s being unbelievably kind, not to mention generous with her long-hidden treasures.

“No, not a wedding like we used to have in town,” she agrees, sweeping my damp hair over one shoulder so she can powder my neck and shoulders. “But a toasting, Katniss. A borrowed white dress and a meal with friends.” She pauses, stilling the powder puff against my skin. “A husband to share your bed.”

I frown. She no longer sounds crazy; she sounds…wistful.

Once I’m dried and powdered to Mom’s satisfaction, she hands me a cotton camisole and shorts, both a pale herbal green, edged with cream-colored lace. The camisole cinches under the breasts with a green satin ribbon.

I blush. I’m so flat-chested that I hadn’t planned to wear anything under Madge’s undershirt, let alone something so feminine and pretty. I protest weakly, “Mom, I don’t need…”

“Please,” she says.

Like the soap and the powder, these garments are hers; cherished items from her youth as a Merchant’s daughter, carefully stored away for twenty years or more. Why is she sharing these things with me now? I feel like I’m missing something, something desperately important. Something in her quiet ramble about weddings, maybe. She wouldn’t do this simply because it’s my last night at home. I’ve gone through five Reapings, and the most she ever did for those was lend me one of her dresses and braid my hair up like hers.

“Okay,” I relent. I pull on the camisole and shorts, both of which are too large on my skinny frame but not so loose as to look baggy under clothes. Mom had a glorious figure at sixteen, or so I’m told. The apothecary’s daughter, vibrant with health and happiness; her hair was thick and gold then, they say, her skin soft and pale as milk.

She cinches the ribbon under my non-existent bust and steps back a little to look at me. “You look so beautiful,” she says with a small smile. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wear a dress?”

“Yes,” I reply, a little sharper than I need to.

“It needn’t be the blue,” she says delicately. I wonder what she knows – and how. No one but Peeta and I were in that room on Reaping Day, and only the woods saw my tears. “I have others; this –” she tugs the skirt of the fine pink dress she’s wearing, “or one like it in green. Either would be lovely, and you could still wear Madge’s leggings –”

“No, Mom,” I say, though I soften my tone this time. “It’ll be cold in the woods, and…and I wouldn’t want to presume – to dress fine when I’m going out there to do who-knows-what.”

She considers this – considers me – for a long moment, then concedes with a nod. “I’ll do your hair when you’re ready, then.”

I dress in Madge’s clothes – they smell powdery and floral, like Merchant laundry soap and Madge’s perfume – and regard myself critically in our cracked, mottled mirror. Beautiful I am not, nor are my eyes “smoky and mysterious” above the dark purple sweater, but at least I don’t look like a girl playing dress-up.

Mom sits me in a chair by the kitchen fire, then takes her sharpest scissors and trims away the ragged ends of my hair. She combs through the length of it thoroughly, collecting any loose strands and untangling even the most persistent snarls. Though thinner this winter than usual, my hair hangs well past my shoulders, even after Mom has trimmed it.

She separates my hair into sections and winds them into a sleek braided knot at the base of my skull, more practical than the elegant coil at the back of my head from last year’s Reaping, but more grown-up than one long braid. She secures the braids with hairpins – her own, though not as precious as the soap and powder and underclothes – and I feel suddenly, irrationally frightened. I’m getting in a cart and riding an hour or so to Peeta’s house, and she’s taking more care with my appearance than she did for this year’s Reaping, when I might have been summoned on stage and sent to the Capitol, televised all across Panem. What does she know that I don’t?

Mom comes around me to view my hairstyle from the front and smiles. “So beautiful,” she says again. She presses a kiss to the top of my head and summons Prim to help her lug the bathwater outside. The sun is beginning to drop; Peeta could be here in as little as an hour. I go to the bedroom to pack.

My bow and sheath of arrows lie on Mom’s bed, carefully wrapped in a cloth, and Prim and Mom have already assembled a few things beside my foraging bag. My chipped mug, the one I served Peeta his tea in last night. Ridiculous though it is, it’ll be nice to take that particular little piece of home with me. Dad’s hunting jacket and my boots, brushed clean and dried thoroughly from my morning’s excursion into the woods. The handwritten book of medicinal plants, created by one of Mom’s predecessors in the apothecary line and given to Mom shortly after her wedding. Her parents disapproved of her love for a humble coal miner and disinherited her promptly upon her engagement, but her mother eventually relented a little – enough to give Mom the plant book. Dad added a sectional of edible plants – information that kept us alive after his death – and I’ve since thought about adding a few entries myself, things I’ve discovered on my own or learned from Gale in the past five years. It’s a priceless resource, but Mom and Prim know the entries backwards and forwards, and either Mom thinks I’ll need the book where I’m going or she always meant to leave it to me, and this is the last time she can be certain of an opportunity to pass it along. Either way, I’m both touched and a little saddened.

Resting on the plant book are two of Mom’s embroidered handkerchiefs, neatly folded. I can’t imagine what practical use I could make of such dainty things, but I recognize – like the powder and soap and underclothes – it’s a huge sacrifice for Mom to make. Next to the handkerchiefs is a framed photograph of my parents on their wedding day. Mom must have packed this too. She has very few pictures of my father, and it startles me that she’d be willing to give this most precious one up. Maybe Gale was wrong. Maybe I really am never coming home.

I hear soft steps behind me and turn to see Mom coming into the room. She looks from my face to the pile of things on the bed, then wordlessly slides open the top drawer of her dresser and pulls out a leaf green dress.

I back away before she can hand it to me. “Mom, no,” I say, holding up my hands. “This is far, far too much already –”

“ _Please_ ,” she whispers. She yanks the drawer wide open and grabs a handful of its neatly folded contents – a rainbow of dresses in soft, beautiful shades. “Take one,” she pleads. “Take them all. You should have something pretty to wear when –” She breaks off abruptly and, to my utter shock, begins to cry.

Mom and I haven’t been affectionate – physically or verbally – since before Dad died. I come to her and awkwardly wrap my arms around her. She’s thin as a matchstick, fragile as a snowflake, and part of me wants to shake her. _Why is she crying?_ Is it because I’m going away forever? Does she finally feel guilty for leaving Prim and me to starve?

Maybe the truth lies in her strange talk of weddings. A girl, at least in Twelve, doesn’t leave her parents’ house until she gets married. Girls who never marry help raise their younger siblings and eventually take care of their aging parents. That’s what I expected, and it’s probably what Mom expected too. But the pattern’s been broken by Peeta’s bargain. I’m going away – not as a bride, of course – but maybe Mom can only deal with it in those terms, and that’s why she’s giving me her treasured possessions and trying so hard to make me look pretty.

But before I can ask, Prim comes in and sees us and starts crying too, and then I start crying and the three of us end up a teary mess, huddled on Mom’s bed, holding each other. It was bound to happen eventually. None of us had quite come to terms with me leaving yet, and better to cry now than when Peeta arrives. Mom and Prim sob their thanks and remind me that I don’t have to go; I remind them in turn that Peeta’s already begun to fulfill his part of the bargain and I can hardly back out now. They cry even harder. I tell them what Gale said about coming back for the Reaping and Games, which cheers them a little, and secretly hope that’s part of Peeta’s plan. I wouldn’t mind for Mom’s sake, but both Prim’s and my heart would break if we never saw each other again.

We dry our tears at last and pull together my things. I agree to take the leaf green dress and two handkerchiefs – one of Mom’s and one of Dad’s – as well as the plant book and the wedding photo. Prim insists I take her favorite yellow sweater – it’ll be short on me but otherwise a close fit – and from my own drawer, I choose two sweaters, two pairs of pants, and my favorite pair of Dad’s thermals, along with plenty of socks and underwear. I add my school shoes to the pile and, with a tight, final feeling in my chest, close the bag.

It’s dark outside when we return to the kitchen. None of us has much of an appetite after crying, so we make a light supper: boiled eggs, Marko’s rolls with butter and cheese, and plenty of strong tea. We sit at the table in the living room, restless and silent as we pick at our food. The minutes crawl by.

After a little, Mom goes to the kitchen to grind and brew a small pot of the coffee from Peeta’s father. We have only two mugs now, so Prim and I share one as we finally indulge in the beautiful sugar cookies. The coffee is richer and more flavorful than any I’ve tasted before; still too bitter for me, but almost palatable, especially paired with the sweet cookies. Mom’s expression is strange as she sips – clearly reminiscent, but I can’t tell if she’s happy or sad at the memories.

An endless twenty minutes later, the coffee and cookies are gone, leaving us all restless and a little irrational, and still Peeta hasn’t come. The last bite of cookie in my mouth feels grainy and flavorless.

Mom fusses nervously in her seat. “Maybe I should curl your hair,” she thinks aloud.

“For an hour-long drive through the woods? In a stocking cap?” I ask irritably.

“Don’t you want to look pretty for Peeta?” Prim teases, but even she’s been affected by the nervous energy in the room. “I’m going to put on my coat and boots to show him,” she decides, and leaves the table to do so.

It seems suddenly imperative that I dress in my outerwear as well – seeing as I’m the one about to go somewhere – so I get up and slip stockinged feet into boots, pull on Dad’s jacket, and layer on the scarves and hat. I start to put on my mittens as well, then think better of it and stuff them into my jacket pockets instead.

I needlessly rewrap my bow and double-check the contents of my foraging bag. It’s little enough to move away with, but, strangely enough, it’s more than I’d have if I stayed here. Prim returns, pretty as any Merchant girl in her fine wool coat and soft boots, and resumes her seat at the table. Mom smiles at her but seems incapable of speech.

When the knock finally comes, we all jump.


	4. Family and Farewell

  _Later that evening the white bear came.  
__“Do you come with me?” asked the white bear. “I do,” said the girl.  
_ ~ _East of the Sun and West of the Moon,_ retold by Kathleen and Michael Hague

I’ve been anticipating the knock all day, and still I’m paralyzed by the sound.

He’s here. Peeta Mellark. Come to take me away from my home and family forever. I can’t breathe for the sudden crushing panic in my chest. I’ve seen him bloodstained, dirty, and wounded; painted gold and glowing like an ember. Which Peeta is standing outside our door? The Capitol-crafted fashion plate? The baker’s son, hefting flour sacks as easily as I pick up a rabbit? The warrior, who killed a bear three times his size?

Before I can recover myself, Prim’s enthusiasm gets the better of her. She runs to the door, throws it open, and hurls herself into Peeta’s arms – well, _arm ­_ – on the doorstep. His left arm is curled at his shoulder, hefting a massive burlap sack, but he manages to catch and hug her back with his right arm without losing his balance or dropping the bag on her head. His surprise at her affectionate ambush quickly warms to a smile as he rests his chin on her hair.

“Thank you, Peeta,” Prim says, squeezing him tightly about the waist. “Thank you so much for _everything_.” At least, I think that’s what she says. Her face is buried in his white bearskin, muffling her words.

“You’re entirely welcome, Prim,” he replies, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Over her shoulder he adds, “Good evening, Mrs. Everdeen. Good evening, Katniss.” His face is bright and flushed; he looks happy and a little nervous.

 _Happy…_ why is he happy? Happy to have company in his Victor’s Residence? It’s only me, so that can’t be right. Happy to have another servant, maybe? And why is he nervous? _I_ ’m the one leaving behind home and family – everything I know – to follow him into the woods and do whatever he wants for the rest of my life!

His mood irks me, though I can’t think why, and my fear begins to settle, leaving me cross and a little confused. It’s only Peeta Mellark, after all. Still, always, wearing his Victor’s bearskin, but he looks younger tonight; recognizably a sixteen-year-old boy. My classmate till six months ago. A kind, generous boy, but a boy nonetheless. Not yet a man. Nothing grand or glorious or frightening.

Peeta gently breaks Prim’s embrace to step inside the house and lower the burlap sack to the floor. “Please apologize to Lady for me,” he tells her. “I wanted to send something earlier, but I wasn’t sure if pregnant goats need special food.”

Startled, Prim stares at him, then at the bulging burlap sack. I step a little closer. I recognize the stamp on the bag. It’s high-grade feed, the kind they give the goats at the creamery. I’ve never priced it but know it must be exorbitant. Peeta’s brought fifty pounds of it.

Prim gives a little sob and hugs him again, even harder. Never mind the rich food and fine clothes; Peeta’s just saved Lady and her unborn kids. And with that, Prim is entirely his. Quite possibly a little in love with him, even.

Of course, falling for Peeta was never a long drop for Prim – for almost anyone, really, who saw his Games. What he and Larkspur planned in training is anyone’s guess, but from the moment they left their platforms, they were inseparable. With his strength, Peeta might have had a shot at the Cornucopia, but he simply grabbed the first knapsack he came to and ran for Larkspur.

He pushed her ahead of him as they ran into the woods, shielding her from the blades and screams with his body. We didn’t see them for a while after that; they were alive and hiding during the bloodbath and therefore – in the eyes of the Gamemakers – boring. The knapsack, we learned, contained flint, a tin of spices, a small saucepan, and a blanket, which Peeta wasted no time in wrapping into an outer garment for his small district partner.

For a pair of Merchant kids, they did all right. Someone in training must have taught them about pines, because Peeta split a trunk with an improvised wedge and harvested as much of the soft inner bark as he could, stuffing every available pocket with sticky handfuls of it. For the first two days, their meals consisted of toasted pine bark chips and “snow soup,” a simmered broth of stones, spices, and pine needles.

Weaponless, they stripped fallen branches to improvise clubs and searched out small sharp rocks for use as projectiles. Peeta collected other things too, odd things – moss, loose bark, different types of soil and resins – which we later learned was for camouflage. The toast design he created for the parade, amazing though it had been, paled in comparison to his masterpieces in the arena. Every night until her last, he wrapped Larkspur in the blanket in his arms and literally painted them both into a tree trunk or rock formation.

Peeta was remarkable at keeping both their spirits up, at treating the Games as no more than a challenging outing. Larkspur played along, but it was painfully clear that he wasn’t fooling her – or himself, for that matter. Their first night in the arena, as he tucked her into his arms, covering her bright hair with a crude cap of moss and bark, she said in a small voice: “Peeta, I want to go home. I want to kiss a boy and have a toasting.”

He smiled down at her, his bark-painted face eerie in the moonlight. “I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen,” he promised her.

Coming from the boy who’d guarded and fed her and practically made her invisible, it gave even resigned little Larkspur a breath of hope. “Thank you,” she whispered. She nestled her head under his chin and promptly went to sleep. Peeta closed his eyes too and, within seconds, his meticulous bark-paint was streaked with tears.

Everyone knew why, of course. Peeta wanted to go home just as badly as Larkspur did. He was, allegedly, in love with some girl from Twelve, a girl he’d said he wanted to win for, but he couldn’t save both himself _and_ Larkspur. He would clearly never hurt Larkspur himself, so either he’d have to watch her die or sacrifice himself for her and never see his girl again – or, likeliest of all, both he and Larkspur would end up on a Career’s blade.

Their third day in the arena, they struck up an alliance with Rue, the dark, birdlike girl from Eleven. Larkspur had befriended her in training, it appeared – they were of an age, Larkspur being thirteen and Rue a highly resourceful twelve – and she eagerly agreed to serve as their lookout in exchange for a little of Peeta’s camouflage. Rue was a remarkable climber: she could dart up the scrubby pines like a squirrel and even scale the lower rock faces of the mountains. She brought back eagle eggs and edible mosses and taught Peeta and Larkspur the simple snares she’d perfected.

Rue was also, thanks to her slight build and quick, subtle movements, a reasonably successful thief. She had already mastered the art of skimming from the fullest pot – that is, pilfering from the Career’s abundant supply stores. In just three days she’d managed to steal an assortment of gloves and scarves, a parcel of crackers and dried meat, and most impressively, two utility knives. She split all her takings with Peeta and Larkspur without hesitation, even giving them one of the knives.

On the fourth evening of the Games, Rue announced gleefully that the Career pack was roasting an elk, and she was going to their campsite to steal a haunch of meat to share. Larkspur begged her not to go; Rue was fleet and stealthy, but she’d never stolen quite so boldly from the Careers before, and a feast like this was clearly intended to draw out the hungriest tributes. Rue told them it was Glimmer, the blonde girl from One, on watch; she was strong and carried a bow, but she wasn’t particularly clever or even a very good shot. Just the same, I had a bad feeling – the feeling you have during any Games when the members of an alliance split up and you know one or more of them will be dead before they meet again.

The other three Careers were dozing in their sleeping bags when Glimmer, perched on a log beside their roasted kill, heard the rustle overhead. With her finely-honed instincts, she swiftly raised her bow and shot an arrow into the tree cover. A soft thud resulted.

The dark girl from Two sat up. “What was that?” she asked.

“Another damn eagle, I think,” Glimmer replied, getting up to investigate.

If it had been an eagle, she’d have missed.

She went over to the source of the sound and grinned wolfishly down at little Rue, who lay at the outermost edge of their camp, still blinking but clearly broken from her fall, with an arrow lodged in her throat. “I think it’s our thief,” Glimmer called back. “Clove, you want the honors?”

Rue reached up with one shaky hand and bravely tugged the arrow out of her throat. The cannon fired.

The dark girl, Clove, came over and frowned down at Rue’s broken body. “Why’d they give her a seven?” she puzzled.

Glimmer shook her head. Her thick blonde braid was dirty but still lusher than any girl’s in Twelve. “You want anything of hers?” she asked Clove. “Or should we just throw her out?”

The Career girls rummaged through Rue’s garments, and, turning up nothing of value, finally tossed her body out of the circle of firelight. They returned to their camp, Clove to her sleeping bag and Glimmer to Cato, the brutish boy from Two who’d observed most of the proceedings with mild amusement, propped up on an elbow.

“To the victor go the spoils,” Glimmer smirked as she slid into the sleeping bag beside him. He smirked back, a hot, bestial look in his eyes. I knew where this was going and was grateful Prim had already gone to bed. After a great deal of fumbling and tugging, Cato had Glimmer underneath him and was bouncing his body against hers, making satisfied grunts.

Clove gave a mildly disgusted scoff and flopped over in her sleeping bag.

Rue’s face appeared in the sky, and Larkspur cried herself to sleep in Peeta’s arms.

The next morning, three of the Careers woke to violent abdominal cramps and a cannon shot. Glimmer was dead, her beautiful face contorted with pain. It appeared they had all consumed some kind of poison, and she had suffered the worst effects. Cato, repulsed, dragged her body out of the sleeping bag and flung it as far away as he could. Clearly, his lust of the night before did not extend to sentiment for the girl he’d coupled with.

Peeta and Larkspur, both lean and pale from their small, inadequate meals, tried the snares Rue had taught them; beginner’s luck was with them and they caught a thin rabbit within an hour. Peeta skinned and gutted it – Larkspur couldn’t bear the thought – and roasted it with a sprinkle of their precious spices. Peeta warned Larkspur about eating too much too soon, but he quickly caved before the stark hunger in her eyes. She gratefully ate her half of the rabbit as well as a good portion of his, her eyes wet with gratitude.

“We’ll catch another,” Peeta assured her, but his smile wavered with fear and uncertainty.

Their bellies filled – or, at least, no longer quite empty – they reset their snare and had walked no more than twenty paces when they heard a snap, a whoosh, and a whimper. There was every indication that their snare had caught something far beyond their abilities to contain, and the Gamemakers must have been playing for suspense and a bloodbath, because the audience didn’t see what had happened until Peeta and Larkspur did.

It was not their snare that had been triggered. Peeta and Larkspur moved cautiously toward the sound to find a girl – a pale, red-haired girl; the silent, foxlike tribute from Five – caught in a net, suspended a few feet off the ground. There was something surreal about the scene, as though she’d been fished from a lake. Surreal – and foreboding.

“We have to help her!” Larkspur cried.

“Please…” the red-haired girl begged.

The feeling of foreboding intensified. Peeta must have felt it too because he hesitated for a moment before taking off his knapsack, pulling out the knife Rue had given him, and going to the trapped girl.

“Thank you,” she whispered as he carefully sawed away at the ropes.

He had very nearly cut her free when Larkspur shrieked, “Peeta, look out!” He whirled about to see Marvel, the dark Career boy from One, hurling a spear from ten yards away. Peeta dodged the spear, dropping Rue’s knife, and charged the boy.

Peeta was no killer – he hadn’t even fought with another tribute yet – but he knew there were two vulnerable girls to protect, and he had no weapon but his body. He wrestled Marvel down – the Career was strong but whipcord-lean – and snapped his neck, then turned back to see Larkspur on her knees, Marvel’s spear protruding from her stomach.

On our battered sofa in Twelve, Prim screamed and burst into tears.

Peeta ran to Larkspur and tugged the spear out, but death was coming, rapid and inevitable as the blood soaking the front of her jacket. The red-haired girl wriggled out of the remains of the net and tried to help, but Peeta shoved her away, screaming like a madman. She disappeared into the woods like the fox she resembled, and Peeta slumped to his knees on the snowy ground, cradling Larkspur against him, his right hand pressing her stomach in a feeble attempt to staunch the blood flow.

Tears of pain and sorrow spilled down Larkspur’s dirty, pale cheeks as she gazed up at Peeta. “I j-just wanted to kiss a boy and have a toasting,” she whimpered, her breath a rasp.

“I can help you with part of that,” he murmured. He was crying too. Larkspur stared up at him, her breath shaky and eyes uncomprehending.

As a breathless Panem looked on, Peeta raised Larkspur’s chin with a blood-slick hand and pressed his lips to hers. It was a real kiss, not passionate, but not a timid peck either. Huddled in my arms on the sofa, Prim’s sobs were broken by a gasp of awe. My own eyes burned.

“That was my first kiss,” Peeta choked out, stroking Larkspur’s tear-stained cheek with a bloody fingertip. “I hope it was okay.”

It was a lie, of course. A boy like Peeta – popular, good-looking, athletic – has had his first kiss by the time he’s Larkspur’s age. But it might have been the kindest lie I’d ever heard. I rubbed at the wetness on my cheeks.

Larkspur’s eyes grew wide with wonder, even through her pain. “Who were you saving it for?” she whispered.

Peeta leaned down to bring his lips near her ear. Whatever he said made her grasp the front of his jacket fiercely. “You have to be the one, Peeta,” she said, shaking him a little. “You _have_ to go home. Go home…a-and love her…”

Her grip on his jacket fell slack. The cannon fired.

Peeta sobbed and pulled Larkspur’s body tightly to him, tucking her lifeless face against his neck and rocking her. It was clear he would have cried himself hoarse – sick, even – but he remembered Larkspur’s other request and knew the hovercraft would be coming soon. He laid her body gently on the ground and bathed the dirt, blood, and tears from her face with his shirttail, damped with snow.

I still think the only reason the Capitol showed what Peeta did was because it was so confusing to anyone outside of Twelve. He built a tiny fire, then from his knapsack he took the package of crackers Rue had stolen from the Career’s campsite the night before she died. He held two crackers over the flame till their pale edges began to darken, then he blew on them a little, to cool, and placed one in each of Larkspur’s hands. “For your new home,” he said softly, kneeling down to kiss her forehead.

He kicked snow and earth over the fire, closed his knapsack, and retrieved Rue’s knife from where he’d dropped it below the net. After a moment’s thought, he reluctantly picked up the spear as well.

People forget that Peeta only had the spear to kill the white bear because he took it from Larkspur’s body.

He wiped the blade clean on his shirttail, then trudged away into the woods.

And now that tribute – the gentle baker’s son who gave a dying thirteen-year-old girl her first kiss and a farewell toasting – hugs my little sister, his strong arms tight across her back. He saved her life today with his rich gifts of food and coal and clothing, and tonight he’s saved her livelihood – her beloved goat and kids – with the costliest feed in the district. A few rotting vegetables would have sufficed.

I hear a muffled sob and realize it came from me. I drag a hand across my eyes and sniff hard, blinking back tears; Mom’s hand brushes my arm and I give her a weak smile.

Peeta holds Prim back a little, his hands at her waist. “The coat looks beautiful on you,” he says, smiling.

Prim’s cheeks glitter with tears of joy and gratitude. I never knew tears could be so sweet. “It’s perfect,” she whispers.

“Did you check all the pockets?” he asks. His blue eyes are dancing. For a moment he looks exactly like his father when he gave Prim the boots.

Prim frowns, puzzled. “What…oh, yes, there was a cap in this one!” She reaches into one hip pocket and takes out a pretty yellow stocking cap, embroidered all over with red rosebuds. Clearly, another gift from Peeta. She must have found it this afternoon; I hadn’t even seen it yet.

She pulls it on over her blonde braids, grinning, and reaches into the other pocket. “And I keep my mittens in – _oh!_ ” She gives a squeak of surprise and pulls out a small paper bag that clearly hadn’t been there a moment before.

I know this game, though Prim might not remember it. Dad used to play it: sneaking a treat under your nose and waiting for you to find it. Little – but precious – things, like a shiny pebble or a new hair ribbon or, on very special occasions, a colorful piece of candy. I’m truly impressed by Peeta’s sleight of hand; he would have done it when he held Prim by the waist, and I hadn’t noticed a thing.

Prim opens the little bag and peers inside with a squeal of delight. “Peppermints!” she cries. She tips the bag to dispense four of the round red-and-white swirled candies and passes one to each of us before taking the last for herself.

Peeta obligingly pops the peppermint into his mouth, smiling at Prim’s response to both the surprise and the gift itself, and I’m struck by the realization of what a wonderful father he would be. A wealthy, kind, pleasant-enough-looking young man; he’s bound to marry soon. I wonder if I’ll raise his children.

Prim looks up at him, suddenly bashful. “Vick Hawthorne says you have a pony and cart,” she says.

Guilt gnaws at my stomach. Peeta sent that enormous basket of food, carefully chosen and clearly intended for our family, and I gave half of it to the Hawthornes without batting an eye.

“I do,” Peeta answers her solemnly. “But during the winter I drive a sleigh.” Prim gapes as she tries to envision this, and Peeta grins back at her. I realize I know what he’s going to say next, and I wonder how much of this he planned ahead of time. “Would you like to go for a ride?” he offers.

Prim’s eyes go wide as saucers. “ _Can_ I?” she breathes.

“Well, that’s really up to Katniss,” he says. “We’re on her time now.”

He looks at me and the words fall out. “We gave the Hawthornes some of the food,” I blurt. “Um…half of it, actually. Was that okay?”

Peeta’s expression is unreadable. I wonder if I’ve ruined everything, if I’ve broken the deal by sharing the food with people outside my family. “Did you have all you wanted?” he asks me.

“Yes–”

“And you, Prim?” he asks her.

“Oh, more than enough!” she says. Sweet, good Prim. It’s not a lie, but it’s still more convincing coming from her. “It was all so good!”

“Then of course it’s okay.” Peeta’s smile returns and I breathe a sigh of relief. Standing beside me, I think Mom does too. “Do you mind then, Katniss?” he asks.

In my concern over the food, I’ve already forgotten the question. “If I take Prim for a quick sleigh ride,” he adds.

“No. Please,” I tell him, a little woodenly. I don’t believe anyone’s ever asked my permission in anything, let alone to do something nice for my sister. “Take as long as you like.”

He smiles in reply. I wonder if he mistook my strange tone for reluctance. “Shall we go, then?” he asks Prim, offering his arm.

She links her arm through his. “Yes, please!”

They walk out, a pretty pair of fair-haired Merchant children: Prim in her beautiful cranberry coat, cheery new cap, and fine boots; Peeta in his radiant white bearskin. They’d make a splash in town, but something tells me they’re not leaving the Seam. Something tells me Vick Hawthorne will have more tales to tell after this evening.

The door closes behind them and Mom turns to me. “Katniss, this is…difficult for me to say,” she begins.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t,” I say. I realize that, since Peeta’s visit last night, she and I haven’t really been alone together. There were moments – in the bath, in her room – but Prim was always nearby. I’m not sure I want to hear whatever it is Mom couldn’t say with Prim around.

When she does speak, it’s not at all what I expected. “Please don’t think that I don’t know – or appreciate – all you’ve done to keep our family alive,” she whispers.

“I don’t,” I lie weakly.

“No, you do – and you’re right,” she says, startling me. “Right to blame me. After…your dad…I was ill. If I’d had medicine – the herbs we grow now – maybe I could’ve treated myself. Love is…cruel sometimes.” She looks abruptly older, hollow, when she says that. I’m glad love is not a complication I’ll have to worry about.

“This bargain…” She frowns delicately. “I don’t want to lose you, sweetheart. If it had been up to me, I’d have turned him down; you know that. But again – as usual – you’ve saved our lives.”

I can’t tell if this is praise or not. My face feels hot and uncomfortable. “We…needed the food,” I say feebly.

“Yes, we needed the food,” she agrees. “And the coal, and grain for Lady. Peeta’s been…incredibly generous.”

I hear what she’s not saying. All we needed was a little bread and meat and maybe a vegetable or two; Peeta gave us all of that and cake and custard besides, to say nothing of restocking our pantry with oats and flour, honey and tea. We were cold, so he gave us both coal and blankets, when either one would have sufficed. The very best feed for Lady, and the finest clothes for Prim.

“Peeta’s special, Katniss,” Mom says quietly. “I didn’t know about the bread, but it doesn’t surprise me. I believe he’ll treat you well, better than he’s treated us, even.”

I doubt that very much, but it’s not worth the argument. “Maybe,” I hedge. “I don’t think he’ll…hurt me, if you’re worried about that.”

Her lips tighten. The answer is yes, then. For all her compliments toward him, she _is_ afraid of that – making me suddenly wonder if I should be too. I bite back the quaver in my voice. “Mom, you don’t think –”

“When you made this bargain, you said you’d do anything for him,” she interrupts, her voice harsh but shaky. She doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “I know how you feel about owing, about paying people back, but…Peeta might not see it that way. Please…don’t feel you have to give him anything he doesn’t ask for.”

I don’t have a great imagination, but it doesn’t take one to realize where she’s going with this. My cheeks burn. “Like what, Mom?” I challenge, daring her to say it. I half wish Peeta was here for this conversation. The conditions of my stay with him have escalated into a riddle – an unsavory one. And of all people, Mom should know better; she was the one who discussed it with him.

Her eyes shift to meet mine, and for a moment I see pain and regret and the fierce maternal love I’ve ached for these five hungry years. And for that moment I both love and hate her, more strongly than I ever have before. I want to hug her and shake her, scream at her and cry in her arms. I want her to tell me that I’m saving their lives with this bargain, and I want her to tell me she’s found another way so I don’t have to go. I want her to acknowledge me as a woman and comfort me as a child.

Of course, we do none of this. She blinks and the maelstrom of emotion fades from her eyes. The moment passes. “Did you pack oil for your bow?” she asks me. “You’ve been so diligent about it this winter; I know you wouldn’t want to forget.”

“No,” I admit. She goes to the kitchen to fetch my oil jar and cloth, and I occupy myself with needlessly unpacking and repacking my foraging bag to find the optimal spot for the oil. We’re both good at this, going through the motions to pass the time, to evade conversation and each other’s eyes. We manage to exchange little more than a “thank you” in the ten minutes before Prim returns.

Prim and Peeta tumble through the front door in a flurry of pink cheeks, frosty air, and sheer delight. Without even pausing to kick the snow from her boots, Prim bounds over to hug me soundly. “Oh, Katniss, you really are the luckiest girl in the district!” she squeals. Her breath is cool and minty in my face. “The pony – he’s called Rye – is so sweet and gentle! I was a little scared because he’s so _big_ , but Peeta let me feed him a piece of apple and a sugar cube and he took them right out of my hand!” She wiggles her mittened palm to demonstrate, grinning. “And the sleigh is _so_ beautiful!” she gushes. “It’s like a wagon, only it’s curved and green and there’s even –”

She looks over at Peeta guiltily; he raises a brow at her – it feels like a light-hearted warning – and she redirects her next remark. “We drove past the Hawthornes’ and Vick and Rory came out to see us and say thanks for the food. Oh, and Vick said something about Gale owing him now?” she wonders aloud.

I force a chuckle but don’t reply. My decision to share our food with the Hawthornes forced Peeta into an awkward position. Of course he would take Prim there, let her show off for Vick and Rory. The Hawthornes, like most Seam folk, keep to themselves, neither seeking nor spreading gossip, but Vick – and maybe Rory too, if he was really curious – wouldn’t have been able to resist. Not with a sleigh and a pony and a fur-cloaked Victor outside their house. They would have peppered Peeta with questions about our bargain. I wonder, in spite of myself, what he told them.

Peeta draws a thick, sealed envelope from under his coat and gives it to Mom. “If anyone gives you trouble after Katniss leaves, bring this to the nearest Peacekeeper,” he tells her. “Even if it’s a Peacekeeper who’s causing the trouble, this should quickly settle the issue. I spent most of the morning at the Justice Building and explained the particulars of our arrangement to Cray; he agrees that there shouldn’t be any problems, but it’s best to take precautions.”

Good, kind Peeta spoke with Cray – about me? I feel a little sick at the thought. Of course, our Head Peacekeeper is no stranger to bargaining with desperate souls, but never would he have traded so generously. His idea of a fair deal is a few coins in payment for a night in his bed. More than a few starving girls – and women; wives and mothers, even – have voluntarily submitted to his lust to put food on their tables. It’s become almost a rite of passage in the Seam, trading your innocence to feed your family.

It’s yet another horror Peeta has spared me – spared us all, really – and yet another thing I owe him for.

Mom turns the envelope in her hands. It’s unaddressed, unmarked in any way. “What is this?” she asks.

“Katniss’s residency documents,” he replies. And, judging by the thickness of the envelope, a lot of money besides. “Her designated dwelling has been changed to my Victor’s Residence.”

I wonder how much that must have cost him. To do it officially – to have a piece of paper endorsed at the Justice Building –“You’ll find you have accounts with every Merchant in the district,” he goes on. “If you’re concerned about being cheated, my father and Marko are authorized to deal on your behalf.” He pauses, smiling slightly. “Marko’s brighter than he looks,” he assures us. “He’s probably a better trader because of it. People tend to underestimate him.”

Mom nods and, to my surprise, returns his smile. “Thank you,” she says. “It’s been…some time since last I traded in town. I’d be grateful of the assistance.”

“I’ve also arranged for a cash fund,” Peeta says. “There will, no doubt, be things you need that I haven’t thought of.”

I doubt that very much.

“The safest way to manage it was through my father,” he adds. His tone is careful, as though bracing for argument.

Mom looks at him strangely. “We’re to go to him if we need anything?”

Peeta shakes his head. “No – that is: you _can_ , but there should be no need for it. Dad’s planning to bring you fresh bread at least every other day,” he explains, “so you’ll see him often enough. If you need anything – food, money, anything at all – simply ask him then.” 

Somewhere at the back of my mind, it occurs to me that these are the sort of arrangements I thought Mom and the baker would have discussed this morning. “That sounds…very fine,” Mom says. I’m astonished at her calm. Beside me, Prim is practically dancing. “But won’t that be out of his way?”

Peeta grins. “Not in the least.”

We all recall it then, and the extravagance of the bargain is almost ridiculous. _You will have a new house_ , he’d promised. To which kind, guileless Marko had added, _We’re gonna be neighbors, you know._

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you into the new house tonight,” Peeta says, and the regret in his voice says that he tried. Probably very hard. Something warm and skittish flutters in my stomach. I blame the third helping of ginger cake.

“I’ve made arrangements for you to visit Monday after Prim gets out of school,” he tells Mom. “Go to the bakery and my father will take you over.” He smiles, as at a hidden joke. “It’s a short walk.”

“Is it on the square?” Prim bursts out, bubbling with excitement. I start to shush her when I realize it must be, or close to, for Marko to consider them neighbors. The square is surrounded by shops and the merchants live above, but every now and again a family will die out and a shop will stand empty. Renting out the rooms above an empty shop would probably be cheaper for Peeta – not that he appears to be concerned with that – and the Justice Building certainly wouldn’t turn up its nose at any income from a previously vacant property.

Peeta gives her a brilliant smile. “Maybe,” he teases. “If the place is to your liking –” this is to both Mom and Prim – “you need only say so. My father has all the necessary documents in hand, and you can move in immediately. If you don’t like the house, tell Dad – and be honest,” he insists. “He’ll send word to me and we can make other arrangements.”

He pauses for a moment, and I realize yet again how well he’s managed this. Not only is he giving Mom and Prim a home and food and money to spend, but he’s arranged for someone to look after them, to ensure they have everything they could possibly need and aren’t being cheated out of their newfound wealth. I don’t think Mom’s bought anything – purchased outright, without trading for herbal preparations or some kind of medical treatment – since before Dad died. And everyone loves Prim, but that wouldn’t stop them from charging her double simply because she’s inclined to believe people are honest and would pay what they asked without a second thought. No one would cheat the baker or his son.

In a very real way, Peeta’s compensating for my absence in my family’s lives – and going one better. Since Dad died, I’ve been the protector and the provider. I brought home game and foraged foods and traded for everything else. Now that Mom and Prim are rich – or soon to be – they don’t need roots and blackbirds and pine bark. They’ll be buying their food from the grocer and the butcher and getting deliveries of fresh bread from the baker himself.

They don’t need me anymore. 

I feel, sharp as hunger pangs, the separation yawning wider and wider between my family and me. _Their_ house, if it’s to their liking. I’m neither a part of that decision nor that future. I knew this, agreed to it from the very beginning, but still I’m suddenly finding it hard to breathe. Prim is going to grow up without me; without me to feed and clothe and look out for her. She’ll have someone to do those things – better than I ever could – but it won’t be me…

“I am…not in town often,” Peeta says awkwardly. “I have in my employment two Avoxes who make regular trips for supplies.”

Mom makes a startled sound – I don’t understand why or what exactly he’s talking about – and he hastens to reassure her, “Please believe me, Mrs. Everdeen, when I say their life is far more pleasant with me than in the Capitol. They served in my suite at the Training Center and were both willing and eager to accompany me to my Victor’s Residence.”

I wonder if he made any sort of bargain with them. If their families have fine new homes in some other distant district.

“Both are… _distinctive_ in appearance,” he adds with a small smile, “and have authority to transact on my behalf. If you need anything from me directly – or need to speak with me for any reason – simply let them know.”

“Can we write to Katniss?” Prim asks hopefully. “Can we give them letters for her?”

I hadn’t thought of this, and judging by the expression on his face, Peeta hadn’t either. For a split second I’m terrified that he’ll say no.

“Of course you can,” he tells her. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to suggest it myself. One or the other will be in town at least once a week, but if you miss them, simply leave your letter with my dad and he’ll pass it along on their next visit.”

“Oh, good,” Prim says, visibly relieved. “Thank you.”

With that, there appears nothing more to be said.

“Katniss, will you come with me?” Peeta asks. His voice shakes a little.

It’s the first time he’s addressed me – even looked at me – since he asked my permission on the sleigh ride, and I realize he’s not just giving me a direction. He’s giving me a chance to change my mind. He’s just told my family that they’ll have anything and everything they want for the rest of their lives, and now he’s telling me that I can still back out of my part of the bargain.

It should be reassuring but instead I’m angry. Peeta could never do another thing for my family and I would still owe him for the rest of my life. He could break my neck and leave my body in the woods, and it wouldn’t cancel out the immense goodness of what he’s done in just one day. How can he imagine that I could simply walk away from that kind of debt?

“Yes,” I tell him, and wonder at the quaver in my own voice.

Prim launches herself into my arms. She’s begun to cry again, but her sweet blue eyes are shining and happy through her tears. “It’s your turn for good things, Katniss,” she says, hugging me tightly. “You’ve done so much for me and Mom. It’s going to be so good; you’ll see.”

I wonder what sort of promises she wheedled out of Peeta in the sleigh. “Take care of yourself, little duck,” I whisper back. She presses a wet kiss to my cheek, and I feel a snout nudge the back of my leg, just above the knee.

I turn to see Lady blinking up at me. Curious at the commotion, she’s left the kitchen to investigate – and was, no doubt, more disgruntled to see me hugging _her_ person than to have been left out of the activity. I crouch down to bring my face level with hers. “Goodbye, little mama,” I tell her, ruffling her soft ears, and lean a little closer to whisper, “Have triplets.” Three kids are not an impossibility, not even uncommon, but Lady’s produced two these past two years for us, and we have no reason to expect more from this pregnancy. She might only have one.

One kid automatically goes back to the Goat Man in payment for the stud service – for the pregnancy, the kidding that keeps her in milk. He’ll take a buck if both kids are male but prefers a doe. The first year we were lucky and got two females; the Goat Man eagerly took one and I sold the other at the Hob as a milk goat for a very tidy sum. The second year we got one of each; the Goat Man took the doe, leaving us to sell the buck. Bucks are obstinate; they can pull carts and father more kids, but their practical use ends there. Our buck ended up going to Rooba, the butcher, for meat; he fetched a good price, and it seemed a way to pay Rooba back for effectively snatching Lady from under her nose two years before.

The end result – Lady producing milk and thereby income for us – is the same, no matter the fate of the kids, but I know it breaks Prim’s heart to watch Lady’s belly eagerly, to help her deliver those kids with all the skill of a seasoned midwife, and then watch one go straight from his mother to the butcher. If Lady had three kids – ideally, two does and a buck – Prim could sell one doe in town and use some of the profits to bribe the Goat Man to take the buck for his herd, then she could keep the second doe as another milk goat. We’ve discussed it a few times since Lady’s last kidding: if she had two kids, the Goat Man would take one and we couldn’t afford to keep the other for ourselves, but if she had three – three does or even two does and a buck – we might be able to squeeze enough profit from the one the Goat Man didn’t take to afford to keep the third.

I get to my feet again and hug my mother. She doesn’t cry, of course, only murmurs, “Thank you, Katniss,” as she kisses my cheek. Her lips are as light as a butterfly wing – as a shadow – against my skin, but still I cherish it. My last kiss from Mom before today was an hurried peck on the cheek the day Dad died. _Go on; you’ll be late for school – and keep your hood up!_ After that, I became the mother.

I catch her shoulders as I move back and look into her eyes, waiting for her to say whatever it was she wanted to say earlier and didn’t. Something tells me it was desperately important, that I shouldn’t – daren’t – leave this house without it.

Instead, she takes my face in her hands, a gesture so tender and maternal that I very nearly _do_ cry. “So beautiful,” she says softly, smoothing her thumbs over my prominent cheekbones. I wonder if she’s lapsed into madness again and is talking about herself. The hearty food; the strong, spiced coffee; the sheer well-being that seems to accompany every Mellark visitor to our house – it’s brought color to her cheeks, a spark of life to her eyes. Even her hair seems brighter, more golden, by the light of Marko’s cheery coal fires.

The fragile ghost that has haunted this house since my father’s death is already turning back into the apothecary’s daughter: a vibrant, beautiful woman of cream and honey and wild roses, with keen eyes and clever hands. A month or two of rich Merchant food and she’ll even have the curves I vaguely remember; she’ll have to alter her pretty dresses yet again. I wonder how she’ll look when – _if_ – I return. I wonder what Prim will look like.

For all his generosity, Peeta’s made no promises of bringing me back, even for the Reaping. The loss of Prim – the realization that I won’t see her again, not for a long time or perhaps not _ever_ – twists at my heart, and I pull away from Mom for a last look at my sister, only to laugh, in spite of myself. Prim is smiling through her tears and holding Buttercup – that ugly, ornery, singularly adored cat – for his farewell pat. “No hissing,” I warn him as I carefully extend a hand.

Apparently the chicken skin won me a full day’s reprieve. Buttercup merely blinks at me – sleepy and downright content – as I stroke his coat. No yowls, no hisses, not even a meow of inquiry for the tidbit I must be hiding.

“You’ll be back,” Prim whispers. “Don’t be scared, Katniss.”

“I love you,” I whisper back, leaning across Buttercup to kiss Prim’s forehead. The urge to cry is almost overwhelming, but I fight it tooth and nail. I won’t cry in front of Peeta. He already thinks I could change my mind, back out of the bargain. If he sees my resolve weakening…He can’t. I can’t jeopardize Prim and Mom’s rosy future, and I can’t owe him more than I already do.

I pick up my foraging bag and the cloth wrapping my bow and arrows and turn to Peeta, relieved that, despite the burning in my eyes, my cheeks are dry. “Let’s go,” I say bluntly, with a courage only partly feigned.

He smiles at me, a sympathetic smile, but there’s something strangely bright in his eyes. Something like excitement –no, elation. As though he’s about to see or do something wonderful. “Thank you, Mrs. Everdeen, Prim,” he says, his eyes shifting to them, and the elation is in his voice too. “I’ll look after her like she was –” He breaks off, blushing slightly. “I’ll take care of her,” he promises.

I frown. We all know what he was about to say. _I’ll look after her like she was my own._ It’s an odd phrase for a sixteen-year-old boy to use – it’s the sort of thing parents say when they’re called to look after another’s children for a time – but certainly not worth blushing over.

I bid Mom and Prim one last goodbye. Peeta opens the door for me, though I might easily have managed it myself, burdened far heavier than I am with my small store of possessions. I walk out into the winter night and gasp at the sight before me. 


	5. Frost and Starlight

  _When they had gone a great part of the way, the White Bear said: “Are you afraid?  
__“No, that I am not,” said she.  
__"Keep tight hold of my fur, and then there is no danger,” said he.  
__And thus she rode far, far away…  
_ ~ _East of the Sun & West of the Moon (Østenfor sol og vestenfor mane), _  
by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, edited by Andrew Lang

***

 _"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."_  
 _"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."_  
 _~The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, translated by Katherine Woods

 

I can’t blame Vick for imagining Father Christmas. I’ve heard of sleighs, of course, but never seen one. Prim was right: it’s exactly like a curved wagon on runners, only far, far more beautiful, with its glossy paint and gilded edges and sleek, sinuous contours. At the front, shielded by the S-curve of the body of the sleigh, is a cushioned bench seat, as deep and plush as the armchairs at Madge’s house and just wide enough for two passengers. Behind the seat is a rear compartment filled with parcels.

Prim said the sleigh was green, but by the feeble light from the surrounding Seam houses and the muted glow of the sleigh’s two driving lanterns, it looks almost black. Decorating its sides are clusters of white flowers, painted with an herbalist’s precision and an artist’s grace. White flowers with a dot of dark red at the bases of their three perfect petals. Katniss flowers.

I feel a prickly rush of heat on my neck. I’m aware that the sleigh didn’t just come like this. Someone – Peeta, obviously – painted the flowers on it and clearly took pains to make them both beautiful and accurate. I can’t begin to guess why, but I know they’re meant for me.

I don’t want to think about it, don’t want Peeta to see I’ve noticed, and I quickly shift my attention to the head of the sleigh, where a little horse – as like the grand chariot horses of the Tribute Parade as a duck is like an eagle – waits in a harness covered with tiny bells. Rye, Prim had called him. I step closer, close enough to touch the pony if I dared. He’s short – as little as I am, I could comfortably rest my chin on his back – and stocky, with a shaggy brown coat. His strong legs are white to the knees, as though he’s wearing stockings – Prim must have loved that – and his mane and tail are nearly as pale blonde as Marko’s curls. His long face is white too, the smooth blaze stretching up to his forehead and cresting over his large, liquid eyes. Not unlike a deer’s eyes, really. I wonder how many households a fat pony would feed.

I’m flooded with shame at the thought. After five years of living off whatever I could forage, catch, or shoot – and now this brutal winter – it’s almost impossible to look at any creature of fur and flesh and blood and not think of meat. Horse meat is among the most expensive at the butcher’s, less than beef but more than chicken. Despite the lean winter, Rye has clearly been well-fed.

I’m astonished that none of our starving neighbors made attempts to steal the unattended pony from the street and slaughter him for food. All forms of stealing are punishable by death in Twelve, but more than a few this winter are hungry enough to chance it. Then again, this pony belongs to a Victor. Maybe they left him alone out of respect for Peeta, whose victory in the Games won our district monthly, if insufficient, Parcel Days. Or maybe the penalty for taking a Victor’s property is crueler than death.

Peeta comes alongside me, looming grand and bearlike in his heavy white fur, and runs a gloved hand along the pony’s strong neck. Rye tosses his head a little at the touch and Peeta chuckles; he takes the pony’s cheeks in his big hands and leans in to rest his forehead against Rye’s. “Ready to go home, boy?” Peeta murmurs. Rye whuffles in response and butts his head against Peeta, who laughs. “No, no more till we get home!”

Peeta looks over at me, smiling. “He loves apples, but he’s eaten all I brought,” he explains.

I force a tight smile and quickly lower my eyes, further shamed by Peeta’s clear affection for the pony. I would never go after Rye as food, never even give it a serious moment’s thought, but my raw hunger – my instinct for meat and the kill – mortifies me just the same.

Rye gives another whuffle, this one impatient, and I glance up to see him lipping at Peeta’s bearskin, near his hip. Peeta laughs again and ducks away, coming back to me. “Sugar cubes, however are another story,” he whispers confidentially. “I never know when he’ll have a stubborn moment, so I need to be prepared.”

I think of sugar cubes and apples and Prim. Suddenly, I wish that she could be the one going with Peeta. Prim, with her bright gold braids and sweet Merchant face and that dream of a new coat. _She_ belongs in this sleigh; not me, a dark feral thing who sees a handsome pony and thinks first of meat. Prim would give up her last bite of food if she thought Rye wanted it. She’d spend hours braiding ribbons into his mane.

Peeta holds out a hand, and I realize he’s asking for my things. I reluctantly hand over my foraging bag and the wrapped bow and arrows; he takes both with almost ridiculous care. He tucks the foraging bag in amongst the parcels in the rear compartment, hesitates for a moment, then hands me back the bow. “Our part of the woods is safe enough, but I’d feel better if you kept this,” he admits with a grin.

So he _does_ know. I’d made some small effort to disguise the shape of the bow and sheath of arrows with the wrapping cloth, but my hunting is probably the worst-kept secret in the district. In any case, he doesn’t seem angry, and it’s spared us an awkward conversation down the road.

Peeta takes a brass bucket from the floor of the sleigh and gestures for me to get in. I step up and slide carefully onto the plush seat, fighting the urge to tug off my glove and touch the upholstery with my bare hand. It’s a deep brown or red and looks to be velvet. There’s a blanket on the floor near my feet, and Peeta reaches across me to bundle it loosely it around my ankles – for warmth, I suppose – then he takes a large pair of tongs from the edge of the bucket and uses them to lift out a brick, which he tucks into the nest of blanket surrounding my ankles. A hot brick, I realize, to keep my feet warm. I’ve heard of such a practice, but most of us who suffer the cold in the coal-dusted Seam own little that would be fire-resistant enough to heat in such a fashion.

To my surprise, Peeta dips the tongs into the bucket again and lifts out a second brick, then a third and a fourth, tucking them one at a time into the bundled blanket and surrounding my feet and ankles with glorious warmth. A bucket of hot bricks. He clearly planned this in advance, but he can’t have gone home since last night. I wonder if he warmed the bricks in the bakery ovens.

I watch his face as he works and realize, with a quiet gasp, that he’s beautiful. His ash-blond hair is more silver than gold in the blue-white reflection of the moon on snow, his fair skin ivory and flawless. Even his eyelashes – I’ve never been close enough before now to notice how long and pale they are – seem like supple threads of ice, at once colorless and iridescent. He’s like a strange, stunning creature spun from frost and starlight.

How could I have thought him ordinary, just a teenager like me? A teenage boy – especially a robust, well-fed Merchant boy – invariably has a spotty complexion, peppered with tufts of newly sprouted facial hair. Peeta’s skin is smooth and even-toned, his chin hairless and unshadowed by stubble. He doesn’t even have sideburns.

I wonder if they did something to him at the Capitol to make him look so perfect. When he came onstage for the recap with Caesar, he looked positively radiant, except for his haunted eyes. No one who had lived through the Games – losing every ally in the process, including their district partner, plus half of their right leg – could look quite so strong and healthy – and, yes, attractive – a matter of days after being taken out of the arena. At least, not without drastic cosmetic measures.

Despite my leisurely bath, Mom’s scented soap and powder and pretty Merchant clothes, I feel grimy beside him. I smell acrid sweat and goat’s dung and the blood of a kill on me. I’m reminded of my dream, of devouring blackbirds raw in front of the white bear, of wiping the blood from my hands in the snow before climbing onto his back. In the dream I’d been cold and filthy and crippled by hunger; today I’m clean and well-fed and still my fingers feel sticky with blood and entrails inside my gloves. How can Peeta bear to be this close to me, let alone touch me?

“How’s that?” His gentle voice breaks into my thoughts. His breath is sweet and smells of peppermints.

I can barely move my feet for all the bundling around my ankles, not that I’d want to. “It’s good,” I answer. “Nice and warm.”

Peeta smiles and reaches across me for a second blanket, which he drapes over my lap and begins wrapping around the lower half of my body, further cocooning me in warmth. He’s careful not to touch me excessively and doesn’t touch my hips or thighs at all; he tucks the top edges of the blanket behind my waist and the rest behind my knees, or just above.

I suddenly recall that I need to thank him before we leave. Right now, in fact, before I do something stupid to incur yet another round of debt. I try vainly to force the words between my lips. After all, it’s not like I can kiss him and run away again.

I blush at the memory, glad that Peeta isn’t watching my face. To run away now, I’d have to untangle myself from this cozy bundle of wool and hot bricks and somehow manage to hurdle over him – and once I’m at his house, who knows? Maybe he’ll shackle me to the stove.

“You remembered everything,” I blurt. It’s not quite a _thank you_ , but it’s the best I can manage. Peeta looks up at me curiously. “The eggs and flour,” I tell him. “Prim’s coat and boots. That expensive feed for Lady – you even remembered she was pregnant.”

Peeta smiles but says nothing.

“I wasn’t even talking to you,” I say, a little desperately.

“I know,” he answers. His gaze is steady, his voice soft and so kind. “Would you have been that frank about your needs if you’d thought I was paying attention?”

I look away, my cheeks hot. Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have said a single word.

“I should’ve come to you sooner,” he says, and the change in his voice is startling. It’s hard now, almost angry. “I had no idea things were that bad.”

“Well, why would you?” I ask, frowning up at him. “You’re not responsible for me or my family.”

His smile returns, small but dazzling. “I am now,” he says.

For some reason, he seems ridiculously happy at the prospect. It irks me, but not as much as it could. If Peeta is happy to buy Prim the prettiest coat and boots in the district, to give her peppermints and take her on a sleigh ride, who am I to complain?

He picks up the brass bucket and goes around to the other side of the sleigh. It’s the first time I’ve really seen him walk since his return from the Games, and his limp, while subtle, is distinct in someone so fit and young. Like everyone in Panem, I remember the moment from the recap when Peeta tugged up his pant leg at Caesar’s prompting to reveal the prosthesis – the false calf and foot replacing his own. Between the wolverine and the tourniquet, amputation had been inevitable. It’s as well he was a Victor: he’ll never wrestle again.

He gets into the sleigh beside me, pulling the bearskin around him as he settles on the seat. He places the bucket on the floor between us and I notice that he’s only kept one brick for himself. I remember that he only has one real foot now.

He sets the last brick on the floor and uses his right foot – the prosthetic one – to nudge it under his left boot. There are no other blankets in sight, and I fight the urge to tug off one of mine and give it to him, along with one or more of the bricks. The bearskin is obviously heavy and warm, but it’s a bitterly cold night. I suspect if Peeta wasn’t sharing the sleigh tonight, he’d be wrapped in both of the blankets now tucked around me, with all the hot bricks to himself.

He picks up the reins but hesitates, his face set and somber. “The Hawthornes,” he says quietly, not looking at me.

I had expected this, or something similar. “We’re friends,” I tell him honestly. “We look out for each other.”

He frowns, somehow unsatisfied by this answer. “I should’ve asked before,” he mutters, almost to himself. “Is there an understanding between you and Gale?”

He’s looking at me now, watching my expression. I think of the pact Gale and I made last year to look after each other’s family if one of us got Reaped. Could that be what Peeta’s asking? He knows I split the hamper of food; does he think I provide for the Hawthornes as well as my own family?

I don’t really want to tell him any of this and answer instead, “What do you mean?”

“Do you plan to marry him?” he asks. There’s a strange note in his voice – an edge, almost. I wonder why it matters to him in the least.

“No, of course not,” I reply. Gale wants a wife and kids but has never so much as suggested that I might supply one or the other. He knows I don’t want to marry – him or anyone – and never want to have children. “Would I have agreed to come with you if I did?” I ask Peeta.

It’s a rhetorical question. Of course I would’ve. I would’ve broken any promise. Given anything to feed Prim.

“Yes,” Peeta says softly. “I think you would. I think you would do anything to help your sister.”

He says it like an observation; not prying or judging, just a simple statement of fact. It angers me that he understands me so well already; it’s as though I’m exposed somehow. “You don’t know me,” I snap. “Don’t pretend like you do.”

Peeta looks away but doesn’t call to the pony, doesn’t move or speak at all, and I know I’ve hurt him. How can I be so cruel to this gentle, generous boy? Chicken and sausages and bread and peppermints; blankets and coal and soft fleecy boots. Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut and let him be kind?

“Yes,” he whispers.

I look at him with a start; his eyes are focused on the reins in his gloved hands. “I burned the bread on purpose, so I could give it to you,” he says, his voice husky and hushed. “I saw you under the apple tree when my mother went out to shout at you, and I wanted to help, to get food for you. So I pretended to be clumsy and knocked the bread into the fire.” He pauses, drawing an uneven breath. “I knew she would hit me for it.”

I’ve wondered this a dozen times before but never dared to believe it. For a moment I wonder if he’s trying to hurt me back for my harsh words. He helped me – saved my life – knowing he’d be beaten for it.

Peeta was beaten because of me. No, not _because_ of me – _for_ me. He willingly took a beating just to get me some bread. The thought knocks the breath from my body. Could he have known he was saving my life?

“I knew you were hungry,” he goes on, looking up at me. I expect grief, anger, resentment in his eyes; instead, impossibly, there’s tenderness – and an apology. “That things were…bad for your family,” he says. “But I had no idea how –”

“Why should you?” I bristle.

Peeta winces as though I’ve struck him. My tone is sharp, but I can’t help it. I’m like a wounded animal. Peeta’s clearly trying to help – has only ever tried to help – but all I can do is snarl and snap at his outstretched hand.

“No reason, I guess,” he admits. He makes a strange sound – a clucking of the tongue – at Rye and we set off, the pony’s belled harness jingling cheerfully in the stark silence of the Seam.

It’s a perfect winter night, still and clear and almost unbelievably cold. So cold my nostrils stick together when I inhale; so cold the stars above are almost blindingly bright. It’s too cold to snow, but every now and again, a little puff of icy glitter dusts against my face.

Peeta skillfully maneuvers the sleigh, winding our way between houses till we reach the edge of the Meadow. We drive across the field, toward the very patch of fence that provides my crawl-space, then Peeta turns sharply and we cut straight north, paralleling the fence. _Well, of course._ Peeta might fit through the crawl-space, but not with a pony-drawn sleigh.

“How do you get past the fence?” I ask, forgetting in my curiosity to be hostile.

He glances at me and smiles. You’d never know from his expression how brusque I’d been to him only a few minutes ago. “Every fence has a gate,” he replies. “Ours has two. The one I use is just a little north of the Meadow.”

I knew this, I suppose; it had just never mattered before. I have a point of entry into the woods and certainly would never have concerned myself with official gates except to avoid them.

We approach it soon enough, in the middle of a seemingly endless stretch of chain-link fence: a wide barred gate with a sturdy hinge on one side and a brightly lit hut – a Peacekeeper outpost, of course – on the other. Peeta slows Rye to a stop and reaches inside the bearskin for an envelope identical to the one he gave Mom earlier. The envelope containing my residency documents.

“What do those say?” I ask, interested in spite of myself.

“You can read them when we get home, if you want,” he tells me. “Essentially: Katniss Everdeen has been hired as a companion to Peeta Mellark. Her compensation includes room and board at his Victor’s Residence, and her wages are going directly to support her family.”

Put that way, it sounds so simple and straightforward – leave it to Peeta to put our bargain into words even Peacekeepers can appreciate – though I can’t help wondering what sort of work I’ll be doing to earn riches and a life of comfort for my family. Whatever Peeta told my mother, these few awkward minutes we’ve spent alone together prove that he can’t possibly want me for my company.

To my surprise and relief, the Peacekeeper who emerges from the hut is Purnia, a stocky woman in her forties who eats frequently at Greasy Sae’s. A good-natured woman – or, at least, reasonably pleasant to deal with. Her gaze falls on me, bundled snugly in the sleigh beside Peeta, and she gives me the smallest of smiles.

“Taking her home, then?” she asks, winking at Peeta.

“I’m a little surprised myself,” he replies with a chuckle.

He offers her the envelope but she declines it with a wave of her hand. “Everything’s in order,” she says, “just make sure you’ve got the papers anytime you bring her to town. We’d let her back in without them, of course, but not out again.”

Peeta nods. My heart lifts a little at the promise of _anytime you bring her to town._

“And mind you take care of her, Victor,” Purnia teases, grinning at me now. “We’ll miss her cooking back here.”

I know what she means. Gale will still bring game to Sae’s, but without me, his hauls will be smaller and have further to stretch.

“I will,” Peeta promises.

“We’ll see you in June, then,” she says. She ducks back into the hut.

June is the Reaping. Peeta’s coming back for it, of course; does that mean I am too?

There’s an ear-splitting buzz and the broad gate swings slowly inward. It surprises me that it’s wide enough for the sleigh, then I think of why the gate must have been created in the first place. If the Capitol wanted a point of entry into the district, aside from the train tunnel, they weren’t intending it for solo travelers on foot or even a pony-drawn wagon. This gate was cut for vehicles of war.

Peeta gently flicks the reins against Rye, who trots through the opening, pulling us eagerly across the deeply drifted stretch of open ground between the fence and the woods. With another loud buzz, Purnia closes the gate behind us.

And I realize, in a way, we’ve just escaped from District Twelve. Peacekeepers stay inside the fence. Citizens do too, of course, without exception – until us.

“Do you ever think of just…making a run for it?” I ask Peeta, a little madly.

“I did,” he confesses, his voice so low that I have to lean in to hear him. “The first time I left without an escort. But it’s no good. When you defy the Capitol, they go after your family, your friends; anyone you love, to get at you. So if I disappeared – if I didn’t show up at my house within a few hours of leaving the district – they’d probably start by arresting my family. If I stayed hidden, someone – probably…” He looks at me and swallows hard. “Someone would get whipped,” he says hoarsely. “Publicly.”

There’s a pain in his eyes that I haven’t seen since the Games. I feel nauseous at the thought of the quiet, gentle baker or jovial Marko being whipped to keep Peeta in line. Whippings have fallen out of fashion in Twelve but certainly not use.

“And it’s not so bad, really,” Peeta says, brightening a little. “I have a lot more freedom than any district citizen – than your average Victor, even.”

He’s right about that. Until Peeta, I’d never heard of a Victor living outside their district’s perimeter, let alone several miles out, on the other side of a large lake. I ask what most of the district’s been wondering since he came home from the Games: “How _did_ you get a house outside the fence?”

“It wasn’t as difficult as you’d think,” he says. “My house has been around since well before the Dark Days. It’s held up well, so of course the Capitol had an eye on it. It’s too far out to be of use to Peacekeepers, so they kept it to house film crews, Effie Trinket on her odd overnight stay, that sort of thing.” He chuckles and I find myself smiling as well at the thought of the garish caricature that is Twelve’s district escort. Her hair – wig, more like – had been pink this year; a puff of pearly pink curls paired with a bright green pantsuit. It makes my teeth hurt just to recall. She’d looked like a stick of candy from the sweet-shop or maybe a Capitol modification of a wildflower, gone horribly wrong.

“Anyway, they had to wire in electricity and all the other modern conveniences if they expected anyone from the Capitol to stay there,” Peeta goes on, “which of course was expensive, both to set up and maintain. So they put it into the grouping of houses for Victors to choose from – so someone else could pay for it.”

The irony of this is lost on neither of us. The Capitol is still paying for the house, of course, through Peeta’s Victor’s winnings.

I think of Victors and Reapings, of Purnia’s _see you in June_ and my conversation with Gale this morning.

“Peeta, what about school?” I ask. “For me, I mean.”

He smiles. “Our teachers were surprisingly agreeable to whatever I wanted.”

 _Our_ teachers. It’s strange that he still thinks of us as classmates when he hasn’t been back to school since the Reaping. And of course they were agreeable. It would be hard to deny anything to Twelve’s first Victor in 24 years, let alone one with Peeta’s charm.

“You’re free to continue – or discontinue – your studies, as you wish,” he tells me. “If you want to continue, I’ll send for your school things the next time someone goes to town.”

I ask what I really want to know. “And what about the Reaping?”

His smile fades. “Unfortunately, I can’t get you out of that,” he says, an odd hitch in his breath. “Or cancel out your entries for previous tesserae.”

I’m not sure which is more unsettling, the sadness in his voice or the realization that he’s already tried. The boy who saved my family from starvation with luxury just a few short hours ago has already tried to get me out of the Capitol’s cruel lottery – the very lottery that won him riches and glory and made it possible for him to save my family. When that didn’t work, as he must have known it wouldn’t, he tried to reduce my entries. No wonder he spent the whole morning at the Justice Building. The rules of the Reaping are absolute; for Peeta to challenge any part of them would require masses of raw nerve, and he would’ve known going in that there was no way he could succeed. He must want me very badly to have tried.

“Thankfully, you’ll never need to take more tesserae,” he says, and I can see he’s trying to lessen the blow. “And it’s only two more years.”

 _Two years._ I agreed to go with Peeta forever, but forever is incomprehensible. Two years is staggering.

“If you’re worried that my…attention will bring you to the forefront in the Reaping, you needn’t be,” he adds. “In the eyes of the Justice Building – and, by extension, the Capitol – you work for me. No more, no less.”

I consider this. Victors’ children have ended up in the arena before, but I’ve never heard of anything happening to Victors’ employees. Then again, to the best of my knowledge, Victors don’t hire people still eligible for the Reaping.

“And if the worst should happen, I’ll mentor you,” he says. “I won’t let you die, Katniss.” The words are quiet but intense, almost a vow. I find it suddenly hard to meet his eyes.

We’re in the woods now. Rye’s moving slowly on account of the narrow path and deep snow, and the jaunty sound of his belled harness is muted. I’m acutely aware of the soft whoosh of the sleigh runners, the crunch of Rye’s hooves breaking the crust of snow.

I’m not a talkative person, but after Peeta’s promise to keep me alive, the silence is heavy. I mentally flail about for a conversation to fill it and catch hold of something else I’ve been wondering for most of the day. “Peeta, there was something…odd when your dad talked to my mom today,” I say. I dare a glance up at him; he’s nodding for me to continue. “It was like…they knew each other, somehow,” I recall. “And this afternoon, when Marko brought us rolls and cookies, he sent her coffee.”

“Coffee?” Peeta echoes, raising his pale brows in surprise.

“Some special kind that he used to drink when he was young,” I say. “Anyway, Mom…remembered it.”

Peeta contemplates this but says nothing. His face is set in the very same expression that his father wears when we’re negotiating a fair price for a squirrel. The baker is more than fair in his trades; generous, really. Just shy of excessive. I wonder if Peeta will deal with me the same way – and realize that he already has.

“Did they?” I press when he doesn’t answer for several moments. “Know each other, I mean.”

Peeta snaps out of whatever reverie he’d been caught in. “You don’t know this?” he says, frowning. “Your mom never said?”

I shake my head. Before today, Mom had never mentioned the baker at all, except for an off-hand comment or two about his bread. Peeta clearly knows the whole story, and though he’s not mocking me with his knowledge, still I have the uncomfortable feeling that, somewhere along the way, I was deemed too young or too stupid to cope with this information, whatever it might be.

“They grew up together,” Peeta tells me. “The apothecary shop used to be next door to the bakery. Their parents were best friends; I think their mothers were even cousins of some sort, so they spent a lot of time together.”

This is already more than I could’ve imagined, but Peeta isn’t finished. “They were friends all through school,” he says. “They even…um….” He clears his throat. “They went out for a while; a couple of years, I think. Dad loved her, wanted to marry her.”

I stare back at him calmly, but my insides are in turmoil. I think of the kind, broad-shouldered baker, of the familiarity in his voice and eyes when he spoke with my mother. I imagine them twenty-some years ago: my mother a beautiful Merchant girl with thick golden braids and eyes as bright and lively as Prim’s; the baker young and lean, his strong arms unscarred and wrapped around her. Two years is not a casual courtship, at least not in Twelve. He would’ve been justified in expecting marriage from a relationship lasting even one year.

It’s so _wrong_ that I want to scream – and would if it weren’t so unbelievable. But Peeta has no reason to lie about this. “W-what happened?” I choke. My tongue is thick in my mouth.

I don’t know why I’m asking. I know this part, backwards and forwards. Dad harvested wild herbs for the apothecary – Mom’s father – to use in medicines, and Mom got to know him on his visits. One day she heard him sing, or so she used to tell it, and that was it. They were engaged within the month. Her parents disinherited her – disowned her completely – but she loved Dad so much that she didn’t mind losing her livelihood and moving to a miner’s dark, tiny house in the Seam.

“Your father, of course,” Peeta replies. “Dad says he had the most incredible voice he’d ever heard; that when he sang, even the birds stopped to listen. After that, well…” He shrugs. “Dad didn’t stand a chance.”

Mom had been a beauty in her day – the sort of girl every boy wants for his own – but I’d never in a million years thought she might’ve had another boyfriend. That she might’ve thrown someone else over – let alone the baker – for Dad. It sullies the memory of my parents’ love, the one bright thread running through my life that I’ve known and believed in without a doubt. The thing that had made it _almost_ possible, some days, for me to forgive Mom her withdrawal, her abandonment, her descent into listlessness after Dad’s death.

I saw firsthand how passionately she loved my father, almost to the exclusion of anyone else, so that when he died, she had nothing left. I’ve seen how distant, how disconnected she can be, when her own children are starving to death in front of her. And I realize that she probably broke the baker’s heart.

Now I understand the looks Peeta and Mom exchanged when they discussed the baker’s role in the arrangements for my family’s care. Peeta’s father may be the kindest man I’ve ever met, but I can’t imagine he was eager to look after the woman who had left him for another man twenty-some years ago, let alone the child of that man. I’m astonished that Peeta had the nerve to ask it of him.

I don’t reply to Peeta. I don’t want to know any more. My simple question has unearthed a bitter tale of love lost, involving my mother, whom I’d only just begun not to resent, and father of the boy who, for all intents and purposes, now owns me. I wonder if the baker knew about the bargain before Peeta came to us last night and realize he must have, for Peeta to have involved him so heavily in the arrangements. I’m amazed he didn’t talk Peeta out of it. Really, I should count myself lucky that a Mellark – any Mellark – wanted anything to do with my family.

I sink back against the seat and stare out into the woods. The moon is round and full tonight, lighting our way more effectively than the lanterns on the front of the sleigh. We’re backtracking a little, travelling southeast from the gate, and I wonder if we’ll drive past the little shack by the lake where I used to spend afternoons with my dad. I haven’t been back there in a few months. For an absurd moment, I wonder if the shack could be Peeta’s Victor’s Residence.

We break from the woods into a moon-bathed expanse of snow and ice: the broad shoreline – grassy and rich with waterfowl in the summer – and the lake itself, now frozen and silvery and unspeakably lovely beneath their blanket of shimmering snow. I’ve never seen the lake at night, let alone in winter. I wonder if I should thank Peeta for sharing it with me.

He clucks his tongue at Rye; the sound is sharp and loud in the crisp silence of the frozen landscape. The pony flicks his ears eagerly and lowers his head. He’s trotting now, but I can feel him – us – picking up speed.

We’re heading straight for the lake. Not the shore, not one of the paths. The lake itself. And I had thought my mother was mad.

I snake out a gloved hand and grab Peeta’s wrist, startling both of us. He slows Rye to a stop at the very edge of the shoreline, or rather, my best guess of it, and turns to me with questioning eyes.

“You’re not driving onto the lake?” I say. There’s an edge of panic in my voice that he can’t fail to notice, but I don’t care.

Peeta smiles. “Sure I am. It’s frozen solid,” he says patiently. “It’s how I got to town. It’ll hold us.”

I let go of his wrist and look out over the frozen lake, considering his words. I’ve walked on the lake in winter, a few feet out from shore. When my dad was still alive, we would pretend-skate, sliding over the frozen surface in our boots. Dad said that at the height of winter, the entire lake was solid enough to walk across, but a sleigh with two passengers, drawn by a stocky pony, is something else entirely. I shiver.

“Are you afraid, Katniss?” Peeta asks softly.

I look back at him with a scowl, furious that he’d tease me like this, but his eyes hold no mocking. Even his smile is gone. I realize he’s not just talking about the lake.

“No,” I lie. I’m not afraid of Peeta, even if he broke a Career’s neck with his bare hands and speared a bear three times his size. Or maybe I am. A little afraid of those bright eyes that I’ve caught watching me so many times, only to glance away when he realized I’d seen him. Afraid of taking a sleigh over a frozen lake to a place I’ve never been before and may never leave. Afraid of why a boy who wouldn’t meet my eyes for five years would suddenly want me living in his house, so badly that he’s willing to pay exorbitantly for it.

Peeta doesn’t call to Rye like I expect him to; rather he continues to look at me, his eyes somber and gentle. As though he knows there’s more to it, things I’m leaving unspoken. I meet his eyes, giving nothing away, and try not to bristle. I’ve been rude enough this evening for a lifetime, and we’ve many more years in each other’s company.

With an air of decision, Peeta stands up, looping the reins over the panel in front of him, and moves the empty brass bucket from between our feet to the floor on his side of the sleigh, then inches over into the space it left between us. He unfastens the closures on his bearskin and slides it off his right arm, then shakes out the resulting length of fur. The coat is larger than I could’ve imagined; it’s obviously a voluminous fit on him, but I realize now he could almost wrap himself in it twice, neck to ankles.

He sits again, draping the coat – it’s lined with even more thick white fur – over the small patch of seat between us, and looks at me expectantly. I stare back, thoroughly confused.

“Come under the fur,” he says quietly.

Something trembles deep inside me. “What?” I say.

“It’ll be even colder on the lake, and your jacket is thin,” he reasons. “Please.” He offers the edge of the fur to me.

He has a point. I _am_ starting to feel the cold, especially now that we’re so near the lake. I lift my hips – my feet are still comfortably immobilized by the blanket and bricks – and carefully scoot onto the length of fur that lies across the seat, then take the edge from Peeta’s hand and wrap the bearskin up over my right shoulder, holding it in front of my chest.

I bite back a moan at the sudden flood of sweet warmth against my back and thighs. Even bundled as I am, I can feel the plushness of the double-layer of thick fur, warmer still from its contact with Peeta’s body. No wonder he hadn’t worried about keeping bricks or blankets for himself.

I’m slight enough that I fit inside the bearskin with ease. If I was a little closer – if I moved in so my hip and shoulder were flush with Peeta’s – the coat would close in front, enveloping us both completely. I don’t want to, of course; I’m plenty warm as it is – but if I moved over just a couple of inches, I’d be even warmer. The radiant heat of Peeta’s body tempts me closer, but I’m used to surviving – even being comfortable – with far less than this, and I ignore it.

Peeta reaches across me to tug the fur tighter around us and meets the obstruction of my hand. We start a little at the contact, though both of us are gloved, and his fingertips brush my knuckles in a gesture that might almost be reassuring. “I won’t hurt you, Katniss,” he whispers. “Not ever.”

“I know,” I answer. This time it’s not a lie.

I look at him – the clean line of his jaw, the tiny puffs of breath frosting over as they leave his lips, the strong pale column of his neck above his scarf – and realize he’s lightly dressed under the bearskin. By sharing half of his coat – and keeping my distance, that gap between us – half of his chest is exposed to the elements. Half of mine is as well, but I’m fully bundled in my own coat and sweater and scarves. Peeta must be getting cold.

That settles it in my mind. I inch over until my left side is pressed firmly against Peeta’s right. His right arm and my left are mashed together between us, lying half on our respective legs and half on top of each other, and I wonder how I could ever have imagined that I had been warm before this moment. The fur closes in front, yielding to the gentle pressure of Peeta’s hand, and he gives a sigh so deep it might be a groan.

I’ve never really touched Peeta before, aside from our handshake last night and that clumsy split-second of a kiss after the Reaping. I’ve never even been close enough to. His body is solid with muscle and so exquisitely warm that I have to stop myself from curling my right arm across his chest and pulling myself even closer. Not simply for the heat, but because he smells so unbelievably _good_ – like fresh bakery bread, molasses and ginger, warm wool and crisp winter air and…something else. Something male and warm and good. A small, fierce part of me aches to turn just a little and press my face against his sweater, to soak up the heat of his body and breathe him in.

“Better?” he asks. His voice is a little unsteady.

I’m not sure what the original question was anymore, but how I feel at this moment is better than I ever have in my life. “Yes,” I say, breathing deeply and filling my lungs with his scent. The hunter in me could track him to the furthest reaches of Panem by that scent.

Peeta takes the reins in his left hand and clucks to Rye. The pony must know we’re nearing home, because the sleigh runners hit the snow-dusted ice with a hiss and suddenly we’re flying across the frozen lake, far, far faster than we traversed the Meadow. I wonder that Rye can keep his footing on the ice, but neither he nor Peeta seem concerned at the pace.

I feel myself sinking against Peeta beneath the weight of the bearskin, but I’m so wonderfully warm and comfortable – almost sleepy with it – that I don’t care. For this last stretch of our journey we’re not master and servant but two fellow travelers, sharing a coat and our body heat on a brutally cold night. Whatever Peeta intends to do with me when we arrive at his house, he’s showed me incalculable kindness tonight. I know I’ll have to repay him somehow, and soon, but for this brief, strange moment, I’m content to accept his generosity.

“Do you see it?” Peeta asks. There’s an eagerness in his voice, the same as when we left my house a short while ago.

I follow his line of vision and see tiny yellow lights – seemingly a dozen of them – in the near distance ahead of us. Peeta’s Victor’s Residence. I’m not sleepy anymore.

I stare at the lights until they start to swim before my eyes and try to imagine what sort of house awaits us on the opposite shore. I feel a tremor in Peeta’s body where it touches mine; not of fear, of course, but elation. He’s desperately eager to get there, so eager that he’s driving his pony across a lake of sheer ice at breakneck speed. Rye doesn’t slip or stumble; indeed, he seems just as excited to be going home as Peeta. The pony is returning to apples and sugar and hay; Peeta to luxury and comfort. What am I traveling toward?

The house looms up out of the darkness of the surrounding forest, and I catch my breath at the sight of what can only be a dream. It's a log home, something my dad referenced in his oldest folk tales, but surely those had never been so large or so majestic. Palatial by District 12 standards, the house is bigger than any in the Victor's Village; maybe as big as the mayor's mansion. Both of its expansive floors have six broad windows, every last one of them filled with welcoming golden light – and that's just the side of the house facing the lake. I can't begin to imagine what the woods-facing side of the house looks like. On the snow-blanketed roof, two massive stone chimneys puff out billows of white smoke – sweet, fragrant wood smoke, not the dirty black smoke of coal fires – and below the many icicle-trimmed gables is a third, partial floor – an attic, I suppose – dotted with small, lighted windows. I imagine one of those little rooms will be mine.

Peeta turns slightly, and I feel his lips against my cap as he whispers, “Welcome home, Katniss.”


	6. A Palace of Wood and Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter I've deliberately changed something from canon, for the first and hopefully only time in this fic. It’s not a major thing but I’ve been very, very vigilant not to alter canon before now, so I wanted to give a heads-up in case this bothers anyone. Suffice it to say: it’s a relatively minor cheat (in my humble opinion) but would’ve messed drastically with the content of this chapter if I hadn’t changed it. Here’s hoping it doesn’t upset any of you too much.

_…there were many brilliantly lighted rooms…likewise a large hall in which there was a well-spread table,  
__and it was so magnificent that it would be hard to make anyone understand how splendid it was.  
__So after she had eaten, and night was drawing near, she grew sleepy after her journey, and thought she would like to go to bed…  
__She found herself in a chamber where a bed stood ready made for her, which was as pretty as anyone could wish to sleep in.  
_ ~ _East of the Sun & West of the Moon (Østenfor sol og vestenfor mane), _  
by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, edited by Andrew Lang

Peeta loosens the closures on the bearskin and carefully unwraps it from around me. Outside the fur, the cold is sharp and startling. More startling is how much I want to tug the bearskin back, to fit myself between the double-layer of heavy white fur and the warmth of his body again.

I untangle myself from the blankets wrapping my legs and ankles – the bricks have cooled, but my feet are still worlds warmer than they would’ve been covered only by my boots – and Peeta offers a hand to help me out of the sleigh. I pick up my wrapped bow and arrows and reach into the rear compartment for my foraging bag; Peeta takes it from me with a small smile as he collects three parcels of his own.

“What do you think?” he asks, nodding up toward the house. His strange elation from the lake has only intensified now that we’ve arrived; his eyes are so bright and eager that they glitter in the combined silver-and-gold light of the glorious full moon and the uncurtained windows.

“It’s beautiful,” I answer, feeling a little elated myself. I could love it here, in this huge log house with its clean wood fires and rooms full of warmth and light. No matter where he puts me, no matter what sort of work I’m expected to do. Cooking and cleaning in this veritable mansion will be a dream. Peeta’s wealthy; he’ll have hot water at every tap and sweet-smelling soaps that are soft on my hands.

And if I’m honest, a tiny ridiculous part of me is relieved to find that it isn’t the ancient palace from my dream, with its high stone walls and dusty rooms, filled with silence and nameless fears. I didn’t ride here on the back of a white bear, of course, but I was wrapped in the fur of one and sharing a sleigh with Peeta Mellark – circumstances very nearly as unbelievable.

Peeta tethers Rye to a post in front of the house – I gather that he has a servant to stable the pony, or maybe plans to do it himself once I’m settled – and leads me up three shallow steps to a wide stone porch, lit on both ends by cheery electric lanterns. At the far end are two curved-back chairs with a little table in-between, all sturdily built of dark wood. I imagine it’s a perfect retreat in the evening. I picture Peeta in one of those chairs, his big hands wrapped around a steaming mug, watching the sun set over the lake. I wonder who the other chair is for.

He pauses in front of the door and looks at me, his eagerness abruptly muted. “Katniss, what do you know about Avoxes?” he asks quietly.

“Nothing,” I admit. “When you mentioned them earlier, Mom sort of…gasped. She doesn’t usually react to things…at all,” I explain, which is a little harsh, maybe, but not unfairly so. “Unless it’s something really bad. Usually to do with the Capitol.”

He nods grimly. “For tonight, it’s enough that you know they can’t speak,” he says. He’s clearly withholding something – something awful – but, at the moment, I’m grateful for his reserve. The Capitol may have outfitted this house for him, may pay for every bit of electricity and hot water and food on his table, but they don’t belong in this warm, welcoming place – least of all, on this frosty night of sleighs and bricks and thick white fur.

“If they’re particularly excited or upset, they might forget and try to talk,” he tells me. “They can produce sounds but not words, so it can be a little startling sometimes. But they’ll understand you perfectly, so don’t hesitate to speak to them.” He gives a small, crooked smile. “We’ve developed a kind of shorthand from living together these past few months, but they always carry slates and chalk in case they need to communicate something lengthy or complicated. And they bring detailed written instructions when they go to town, of course.”

He opens the door and guides me into an entryway: a small square room opening out into the rest of the house, with a long set of stairs straight ahead. I’m immediately struck by how warm the house is – and how good it smells. It smells of fresh bakery bread, golden-crusted and perfect; of yeast and sugary baked things; of cinnamon and sweet burning pine.

I follow his lead, stamping the snow from my boots on the coarse rug just inside the door, and a woman emerges from a doorway on my right. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. My jaw slacks a little in astonishment.

“Hello, Lavinia,” Peeta says warmly.

I’ve watched the Games all my life, seen gorgeous tributes from every corner of Panem, and every last one of them would pale in comparison to this woman. My first thought is that she doesn’t need to speak. Her beauty is eloquent enough to win all the friends and lovers she could ever want.

She has porcelain-fair skin and dark red hair – cherry red, almost – pinned in a large, loose bun at the nape of her long slender neck. Red hair is rare in Twelve – Darius is the only red-haired person I’ve ever seen in the district, and he’s actually from Two – and possibly across Panem as well. Among the tributes I’ve seen, red hair is unusual. Peeta’s final ally in the Games – the foxfaced girl from Five – had red hair, though nowhere near as deep-toned and vibrant as this woman’s.

Her features are so perfect they might’ve been chosen from a Capitol catalog: neatly arched black eyebrows over almond-shaped hazel eyes, hemmed by a fringe of equally black lashes; a small, elegant nose; high cheekbones; a slightly pointed chin. Her figure is neat and slender but not skinny; her breasts and hips provide just the right amount of curve beneath her long dress of pretty blue calico. It’s an odd garment for such a striking beauty; old-fashioned, really, though it looks stunning on her.

My eyes return to her face and she smiles – a friendly smile, neither smug nor mocking – showing straight white teeth. She’s not just perfect; she’s _Capitol_ perfect.

“Katniss, this is Lavinia,” Peeta says. “My housekeeper, of sorts. Lavinia, this is Katniss.”

The woman’s smile turns mischievous, crinkling her eyes at the corners, as she reaches out a hand to shake mine. Her housekeeper’s tasks must be light indeed; her slim white hand is as soft as Prim’s against my callused palm.

“Nice to meet you, Lavinia,” I tell her. “Um…I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Her eyes shift to Peeta and she raises her brows, seemingly amused by something I said. At least, I _think_ she’s amused. Game, I can read with ease, but I’ve never been great with people. _Subtle as a hammer,_ Gale calls me. Lavinia’s striking face is expressive indeed, but interpreting those expressions is going to be like learning a new language.

Peeta shakes his head to whatever is in her eyes; clearly, he’s fluent in reading her expressions. “Never mind that now,” he tells her. “Would you mind starting the cream?”

Still smiling, she quirks her head toward the room from which she came.

“Already started?” he answers with a laugh. “You have far more faith in me than I have in myself.”

Her smile broadens to an outright grin. She steps forward, reaching for the parcels in his arms, and he gives them to her, along with my foraging bag. “These go to Katniss’s room,” he says. “I’ll see to the rest.”

 _These?_ I only brought the foraging bag, along with my bow. I eye the parcels critically. They’re bulky but seemingly lightweight; slim Lavinia holds them with ease. Blankets, maybe – or bed linens? That must be it. He probably hasn’t used the little attic room – the room where I’ll be sleeping – before now, so he needed to get sheets and things for me.

Lavinia nods at the order and disappears briskly up the stairs. Peeta turns to me. “Have you eaten?” he asks.

“Better than I ever have in my life,” I answer frankly. It’s the truth, but it comes out sounding a little brusque, and I remind myself not to be so sharp in answer to simple questions.

Far from offended, Peeta gives me a small smile. “I mean _recently_ ,” he clarifies gently. “Supper. I can make something if you like.”

“Oh,” I say. “No, that’s alright. I’m plenty full.” A half-lie – after the hearty feast of our lunch, supper was small and insubstantial in my nervous stomach – but it’s dark and late. And I certainly don’t expect him – or his beautiful housekeeper – to make me anything.

He laughs suddenly. I scowl, certain he’s mocking me – my words, my appearance, _something_ – but the expression on his face is simply happy – delighted, even. As though the elation that has been bubbling in him all night has finally erupted. “I never thought you’d be here,” he says, almost to himself. “I never thought you’d come.”

“Well, I am, and I did,” I say bluntly. I know I should soften my words, but I don’t understand his excitement and it’s making me uncomfortable. “What would you like me to do?”

“Do?” he echoes. He gives a short, surprised laugh; it’s joyous, like a sunbreak on a gray winter day. “I’d like you to come into the living room and warm up,” he says.

He brings me into a large room at the front of the house, and my breath catches in my throat. The living room faces the lake, and the west wall features three enormous windows – just one pane contains more glass than all the windows in my house combined – for what, in daylight, must be a phenomenal view. The exterior walls are, of course, crafted from logs, smoothly planed and speckled with dark knots, but the interior walls have been painted to look like the woods in which the house was built. It’s so masterfully done, from the precise texture of the tree trunks to the dancing, dappled shadows below, that, at a glance, it seems like the room is transparent – or endless. A huge stone fireplace, stacked high with merrily crackling pine logs, dominates one painted wall, and around it are situated two deeply-cushioned armchairs, a broad low table, and a long sofa, crafted of stout dark wood and upholstered in cozy green-and-brown tweed. The carpet underfoot is like moss, dark green and slightly spongy beneath my boots.

“Come here,” Peeta says, beckoning me toward the fireplace. I follow gratefully, needing little encouragement. He pockets his gloves in the bearskin and, smiling, takes the wrapped bow and arrows from my hands. “Do these need attention tonight?” he asks.

I shake my head, surprised that he even thought to ask. He places the long parcel carefully – as though it were one of his father’s spun sugar creations – on the low table, then he turns back to take off my stocking cap and unwind my bulky layers of scarves. He’s tending me like a child, but I don’t quite mind. With every garment he removes, I feel more of the fire’s exquisite heat on my body.

He reaches next for the buttons on my hunting jacket. It was my father’s and is overlarge on me, so the topmost button lies between my breasts, and the brush of Peeta’s fingers _there_ , however innocently, wrenches a startled gasp from my throat.

Peeta jerks his hands away as though he’s been burned, his cheeks flooding with color. “You, um…you can take that off too, if you like,” he tells me. “You won’t need it anymore tonight.”

He sets my hat and scarves on one of the sofa cushions and shrugs out of his bearskin. I’m startled by how human he looks without it. He’s still muscular and broad-shouldered, of course, but no longer bearlike in the least. Beneath the fur he’s wearing a thick green sweater – evergreen, my favorite color – and brown corduroy trousers that look velvety-soft.

 _Laundry,_ I add to my mental list of chores. I’ll be washing those clothes soon. I think of Gale’s mother, with her chapped red laundress’s hands, and remind myself that Peeta has hot running water and Merchant-grade soap. I won’t need to scald things, nor use the harsh detergents that are all we can afford in the Seam. And in any case, my hands were rough to begin with.

I pull off my gloves and unbutton my jacket with icy fingers. We weren’t exposed to the brutal cold all _that_ long, but my fingers and toes have always been colder than the rest of me, and more so in wintertime. There’s little enough to do for it, save throw on an extra pair of mittens – which isn’t practical in the least on hunts – so I usually just ignore it. It’s easy after a while. Just another gnawing ache; a different kind of hunger.

Peeta takes the garments from me and adds them to the pile on the sofa, then settles me in the armchair to the right of the fireplace. The heat from the fire is glorious; I want to turn, to stretch out my fingers toward those bright, merry flames and fragrant crackling logs beneath, but before I can stir my body to move, Peeta crouches in front of me and takes my hands in his.

He rubs my small dark hands between his large pale ones, gently chafing the blood back into my cold fingers, and the sweet warmth of his bare skin moving against mine is almost overwhelming. I feel myself melting into the touch and wonder, with mild irritation, how his hands can be so deliciously warm when we were both in the sleigh for the same amount of time – sharing his bearskin, no less – and I was even more bundled than he was.

He raises my hands, still cradled in his, to his face, and I feel the moist, radiant heat of his breath on my palms. No one’s ever warmed my hands with their breath before. I’ve done it for myself, of course; countless times on hunts or the walk home from school, but I don’t remember anyone else – not even Dad – doing it for me.

It’s a startlingly intimate comfort. Peeta’s lips are a hairsbreadth from my skin. If I curved my palms upward, even a little, I could cup his face in my hands. He’s gold by firelight; gold like fresh bakery bread, like honey and dandelions and lazy afternoon sun. He smells incredible.

The tip of his nose grazes the base of my thumb and I gasp, both at the unexpected contact and the corresponding skip in my heartbeat. Peeta’s eyes flicker to mine and he smiles, a small, blushing smile I could almost describe as bashful. He lowers my hands again, resting them on my knees, and bends to my boots. “May I?” he asks.

I nod, confused. Peeta removes my boots, then my socks, and begins massaging my bare feet with his large, gentle hands, sending tiny, fierce threads of heat seeping up my calves to my thighs. My breath leaves me in a shudder as the melting feeling overtakes me, deeper and more primal this time. If Peeta’s hands on mine were pleasure, this is ecstasy. His thumbs rub small circles on the arches of my feet, and I hear a tiny moan escape my lips.

I’ve never felt anything so good in my life, and it infuriates me. I don’t know what Peeta’s playing at, but this isn’t why I’m here, and we both know it.

I jerk my feet away from his hands and curl them behind the legs of the chair, hiding them from his reach. Undeterred, Peeta chuckles softly and nudges over a pair of slippers that I hadn’t noticed warming on the hearthstone. They’re a woodsy shade of green, plush and fleeced-lined like Prim’s boots; like little parkas for your feet. I’ve never worn even an outer garment quite so thick. I stare at them but make no move to put them on.

Peeta rises to his feet, smiling. It’s his father’s smile, the playful, eager one he wore after sneaking the peppermints into Prim’s coat pocket. “Have you ever had hot chocolate, Katniss?” he asks.

I scowl up at him. “What?”

“Come; I’ll show you,” he says.

He offers a hand to help me up and I find myself stepping into the slippers. I’m cross at myself, but only for a moment: the slippers are every bit as soft as they look and twice as warm, thanks to the fire. I wonder idly how long they’ve been there. They’re Lavinia’s, obviously; we haven’t been here long enough for anything from the sleigh to have warmed up this much, assuming Peeta actually _wanted_ to buy me slippers. A ridiculous thought, of course – buying slippers for his new servant – but at the very least, he must have asked Lavinia to put them by the fire this evening. Which means he was planning on bringing me back with him before he came to town.

I follow him across to the kitchen, and the smell of fresh bread is so redolent as we walk in – as though baked into the walls – that I almost weep. If ever there was a room designed to entice you to linger, it would be this one.

The ceiling is made of embossed tiles of dull gold and framed by cupboards of a dark brown wood that run the perimeter of the room. Below those is another level of cupboards, capped with a sleek worktop of luminous amber – granite, I imagine. The floor is paved with rich brown stone, broad flat slabs that look warm to the touch.

Dominating the wall nearest us is a humming silver icebox, nearly as wide as Peeta is tall. Straight ahead, beneath a large south window, is a sink that looks deep enough for me to bathe in, and in the expanse between them stands a trestle table of the same dark wood as the cupboards, with a basket of apples on top and four chairs set around. In the center of the west wall is the biggest stove I’ve ever seen: a massive, magnificent unit of burnished copper, as broad as the living room fireplace, with six burners and two ovens. I wonder how I’ll manage on it.

Lavinia stands there now, patiently stirring the contents of a small saucepan. If I were to hazard a guess, it smells like hot milk – no, _cream_ ; I remember Peeta mentioning it on our arrival – and somewhere, impossibly, toasted bread. The counter beside her holds a large ceramic canister, three spice bottles, and a honeypot.

Peeta peers over her shoulder at the saucepan and smiles. “That looks great,” he tells her. “Thank you.” She gives a little nod, a ghost of a smile, and leaves the room.

Peeta waves me to a seat at the table, and my eyes go at once to the basket of apples. Large, firm, perfect apples, in shades of pink and green and crimson-blushed gold. I’m not especially hungry, but still my stomach clenches longingly at the sight. Is Peeta so rich that he has food just for decoration? Experience reminds me that I might not have another chance at such easy pickings, and I burn with the urge to take a couple of apples; stuff them up my sleeves, maybe, since Madge’s stupid leggings don’t have pockets.

I know better than to anticipate an offer of “hot chocolate,” or whatever it is that Peeta’s making. Merchant kids are fond of showing off new discoveries without offering to share. Madge is like that sometimes. Not rude, just…unthinking.

I watch Peeta whisk a dollop of honey, liberal pinches of all three spices, and several heaping scoops of what must be powdered chocolate into the pot of cream. I’ve only had chocolate once before that I remember. I bought a tiny bar from the sweet-shop for Prim’s birthday two years ago, and she insisted on sharing it with me. It had been sweet, creamy, heavenly on my tongue. The memory, paired with the heady aroma coming from the saucepan, makes me want to cry.

I swallow hard against the tears as Peeta bends to remove a slice of bread from one of the ovens, then reaches for a clean spoon. It’s like a fluid, elaborate dance, watching him in the kitchen. He tastes a spoonful of the liquid, frowns slightly, and adds an additional pinch of one of the spices and another half-scoop of powdered chocolate. He whisks it for thirty seconds or so and tastes it again. This time he smiles. “Perfect,” he pronounces.

He pours the entire pot into a mug the size of a soup bowl – _pig_ , I call him in my mind. I didn’t expect him to share, of course, but I also didn’t expect him to prepare such a large portion for himself. He cubes the toasted bread, sprinkles it on top of the liquid, and drizzles over the whole of it with honey. And then sets the mug in front of me.

Of course it’s for me. _Entirely_ for me. The unspoken insult burns in my throat like bile. “A-Aren’t you having any?” I stammer.

He shakes his head. “This is for you,” he says. He hands me a spoon, grinning. “Try it.”

It occurs to me as I dip my spoon into the mug that he’s already had his own spoon in here twice, tasting what I’m drinking. It strikes me as strange, this easy familiarity. I scoop up a spoonful of toast and liquid chocolate and bring it to my mouth.

Chocolate and cream and honey and spices – cinnamon, for certain, and maybe nutmeg – and perfect golden toast, made from his own good bread, no doubt…It’s so good that I want to cry – and to hit him soundly across the face. What is he playing at?

“Good?” he asks hopefully.

 _Of course it’s good!_ I want to snap. _It’s chocolate and cream and honey and spices – pure luxury in a cup!_ Instead I nod and push the mug toward him. “You have some too,” I insist, “or…I won’t.”

Peeta shrugs. “Okay,” he says. He takes a second spoon and settles in the chair nearest me, scooping up a bite of toast and chocolate and guiding it to his mouth. I’m struck again by the intimacy of what he’s doing. First tasting the chocolate before giving it to me, and now sharing from my cup. I remind myself that I finished his tea after he left my house last night, but it isn’t the same at all.

We don’t talk as we slowly sip our spoonfuls of gently spiced chocolate and toast. I realize I want more – all of it, if I’m honest – but it was me who insisted he share. Still, it surprises me when Peeta stops after about five spoonfuls, licking his spoon clean and setting it aside. “The rest is yours,” he says, smiling.

This isn’t difficult to translate. He knows I want it but won’t say as much. I lift the mug to drink, hiding my angry flush, and Peeta gets up from the table – to clean up, I presume.

A few moments later, he returns with a small plate and a paring knife. I frown, confused, until he takes a red-and-gold apple from the top of the basket and begins to slice it, expertly, into pie-perfect slivers. He silently offers the first pale slice to me.

My face burns with embarrassment and anger. Had my desperation been so obvious? I don’t need the damn apple; my stomach’s had more than its share today. I can’t help how I look at food. I’ve had too many years with nothing.

I want to ignore him, to turn away – or better yet, get up and leave the kitchen. But I have nowhere to go. And Peeta’s just being kind, really; there’s no mocking in his face.

And I really, _really_ want to eat that apple.

I take the slice from his hand and pop it into my mouth. The flesh has a wonderfully delicate flavor; honey-like, yet tart. I don’t think twice about taking the second slice he offers, nor the ones after that, alternating bites of apple with long sips of warm, creamy chocolate. We don’t speak as, over the course of ten minutes, he feeds me the entire apple, slice by delicious slice. But halfway through, a small smile curves his lips.

When I’ve finished both the chocolate and the apple, Peeta directs me back to the foyer and up the stairs. “I’ll give you a tour tomorrow,” he promises. “For now, I imagine you’ll want to rest.”

I’ve been in a house with an upstairs before – Madge’s has three opulent floors with a study and a ballroom and more bedrooms than I can count, all expensively furnished – but never dreamed I’d live in one, and my anger from the kitchen slowly fades to wonder. Every inch of the stairs and the floor above is densely carpeted; I want to kick off my slippers and curl my bare toes into it.

Peeta leads me down a hallway, hemmed by three doors on each side, and stops before the middle door on our right. “This will be your room, if you like it,” he says, opening the door for me. I step inside.

Like the kitchen and living room, the bedroom is two or even three times the size of a corresponding room in the Seam. I’m peripherally aware of ankle-deep carpet, tall wooden dressers, Lavinia moving quietly about, and yet another cheerfully crackling fireplace, but my attention is focused on the enormous bed. Wider than it is long, my entire family – including Buttercup and Lady – could lie in it and have room to spare. Its dark wood frame is beautifully curved, like Peeta’s sleigh, at both ends, and the mattress is heaped with thick, heavy blankets in comforting shades – forest shades – of green and brown and gray. The top blanket, I realize belatedly, is fur. Fox, probably, by the look of it. I ache to bury my hands in it.

There is no possible way that this room, or any part of it, came from the three parcels Lavinia brought up earlier.

“I, um…I bought some clothes for you,” Peeta says awkwardly, gesturing at a pale green nightgown draped over a rack in front of the fireplace. “Lavinia will help you get ready for bed.”

I look around myself properly now. Dark, finely crafted furniture, matching the bedframe, lines the walls; my few treasures from home have been taken out of my foraging bag and carefully placed on the surface of one of the dressers. Two large windows face east, into the moon-bathed woods. What I had taken for carpet is, in fact, a large area rug – crafted from pelts of some kind, cream-colored and tantalizingly soft against my ankles – over a hardwood floor. The walls are a deep evergreen, so skillfully painted, with those elusive hints of blue and yellow, that I can almost feel the prickle of pine needles, the stickiness of sap, as I place a hand against the wall. The fireplace is built of wild rock and fragrant with cinnamon and pine.

I can see and smell the woods, can feel it in the rock of the mantle, the wood floor and furniture, the fur rug and bedcovering. If I inhale deeply enough, I can taste the sweet tang of pine and wood smoke. “It’s perfect,” I whisper.

Peeta exhales heavily, as though he’s been holding his breath. “I’m so glad you like it,” he says, smiling. “Please, sleep as late as you like tomorrow.”

I don’t bother to argue with this. At the moment, I’m too overcome by the lush wilderness of my new room.

“Good night, Katniss,” he says softly.

“Good night,” I answer. Peeta leaves the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

With an unKatnisslike giggle, I kick off my slippers and stroke the fur rug with my bare feet. I groan at the plush silky-softness against my toes and crouch down to sink my hands into the pile. Lavinia makes an odd throaty sound; I look up and realize she’s laughing. Or laughing as best as an Avox can.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, blushing a little at my childish behavior. “I couldn’t resist.”

Lavinia shrugs, still laughing, and beckons me over to the fireplace. She tugs at the hem of my sweater demonstratively, and I realize she wants me to undress. I take off the sweater, undershirt, and leggings, leaving me in Mom’s pale green camisole and shorts. Lavinia contemplates me a moment, then tugs at the camisole hem. I look at her doubtfully and she turns her back to me, granting me privacy. I shrug and pull off the camisole as well, easily covering my tiny breasts with one arm. I hadn’t really needed the garment anyway.

Lavinia turns back and helps me into the nightgown. This, I realize, will have come from one of the parcels. The material is soft as fleece against my skin and warm from the fire; the sleeves reach cozily to my wrists, and the skirt hangs to my knees. Lavinia nods, as though pronouncing it a good fit, then guides me to a little dressing table near the head of the bed. I sit as directed and she gently unbraids my hair, then begins to brush it. After a few moments, I realize she’s not brushing simply to straighten my hair out of its kinks from the braid; she’s brushing like the Merchant girls do. A hundred strokes to make your hair beautiful and shiny. I want to protest but the bristles feel so good – hypnotic, almost – against my scalp.

I want to rebraid my hair when she’s done but it feels like a cloud, weightless and soft against my face. I steal a glance in the mirror and realize, with my hair brushed out properly, I look almost pretty. “Thank you,” I tell her, and mean it.

Lavinia disappears for a moment into an adjacent room and returns with a warm washcloth for my face and hands. It smells of chamomile and feels wonderful against my winter-dry skin. When I’ve finished washing, she takes the cloth away and returns with a jar of some sort of cream that she dabs gently over my cheeks and lips – where I’m most chapped from the cold and the wind. The cream is thick and smells headily of roses; it melts soothingly into my skin on contact. It must be Capitol-crafted, because when I bring a hand to my cheek, the chapping has already begun to soften and fade. Lavinia works a little of the cream into my hands as well, leaving my dry, cracked fingertips instantly smooth. I have no words to thank her this time.

She turns back the blankets on one side of the bed and removes a long-handled brass pan from between the sheets. I recognize it vaguely: it’s a warming pan, filled with hot coals. Madge has one; I saw it in her bedroom once when we worked on a school project together. It warms up the bed before you get in. I think how wonderful it would be to have one of these at our home in the Seam, then remember that we don’t have the extra coals to fill it. Or, at least, we didn’t before today. Mom and Prim have more coal now than they know what to do with. I wonder if Peeta bought a warming pan for their new house.

I slide between the warm sheets and lie back against the flock of pillows placed along the head of the bed, only to be assailed by the bright, clean scent of pine, strong and very close by. I sit up at once and shift aside plump feather pillows till I find one that, by scent and texture beneath my fingers, can only be filled with dried pine needles.

Lavinia raises a brow – asking if it’s all right, I think. “He put a pine needle pillow in my bed,” I say, incredulous.

She holds up three fingers and smiles. _Three._ Three pine needle pillows for my bed. In case the wood and stone and fur weren’t enough. I lie down again, my cheek on the pine needle pillow, and Lavinia tucks me in, pulling the blankets up around me. She stirs the fire, turns out the light, and leaves.

It’s all so wonderful and I’m so angry. What kind of a bargain _is_ this? _Let me feed your family, Katniss. In return, I’ll warm your feet and make you hot chocolate and give you a bedroom crafted from the woods you love._ Peeta’s made no mention of my duties yet, but this…this ridiculous generosity is a horrible way to begin. _Sleep as late as you like?_ How on earth am I supposed to cook him breakfast if I’m sleeping as late as I like?

I turn to my back in a huff – and a cloud of sweet pine scent – and stare at the ceiling, longing for Prim. For her slight weight on the mattress, for a body to curl up against. _Couldn’t they find one,_ I wonder, scowling, _in this luxurious house?_ After all, for the first time in my life, I have someone to get me ready for bed. Someone to dress me in pretty nightclothes and brush my hair till it shines, to scent and smooth my body with Capitol creams. Though, why I need to _be made ready_ for bed, I really don’t understand.

And then, with a shiver, I do.

Everyone expected it. Everyone saw this coming – everyone but me. Gale with his warnings, Madge with her pills; even Mom, with her beautiful underclothes and careful pampering, her precious gifts and strange talk of weddings. She wasn’t insane in the least. She was preparing me for my wedding night, or the closest I’ll ever come to it. Preparing my body for a man. A man who’s coming to my bed tonight.

My flight response kicks in, hard. I surge up in bed, my heart racing, my breath coming in ragged shallow pants. The sweet apple slices and hot chocolate, so comforting in my stomach just a moment ago, lurch warningly toward my throat.

I force myself to be calm.

_He’ll be gentle._

I think of Peeta’s hands rubbing warmth into my hands and feet; of his breath on my palms, his shy smile, his fiery blush when he inadvertently touched my chest. I think of him tasting the hot chocolate before giving it to me, then sharing my cup. I think of the heat and smell of his body under the fur.

 _He’ll be gentle_.

And then I remember watching him wrestle. The strength in his arms, the solid trunk of his body, his powerfully muscled legs…wait, he’d lost a leg – or part of one – to the Games. I wonder madly if it would slow him at all if I kicked his right knee.

I remember watching him lift flour sacks in the market. I remember watching him break a Career’s neck with his bare hands. I remember watching him kill a bear three times his size, despite a gory wound that finally took half of his right leg. A scrawny Seam girl, whose most fortifying meal before this afternoon was blackbirds in gravy, will present no challenge whatsoever.

I shudder violently, feeling tiny and powerless.

_He’ll be gentle. He’ll be gentle. He’ll be gentle._

I abruptly wonder why he bothered with the whole charade. Any girl in Twelve – in most of Panem, probably –would be Peeta’s for the asking. He’s kind, strong, good-looking – a Victor, for pity’s sake! He literally has money to burn. And he decided to spend it on my family, so I would come to his house and sleep with him?

I would’ve expected better business sense from a Merchant. For what he’s giving – has already given – my family, I’m certainly no bargain. I’m dark, plain, bony, and scowling; a sixteen-year-old girl with the breasts of a child. I’ve never even kissed a boy before, let alone done “other things.” If Peeta’s expecting a night of bliss in exchange for his generosity, he’s going to be sorely disappointed.

I said I’d do whatever he wants. And, of course, I will. Poorly, but I will – because I owe him.

My mind swirls with images, with sensations that my body can scarcely comprehend. His big hands would be firm on my bare hips. His breath would smell of spiced chocolate – or maybe still of Prim’s peppermint candies. His body would be warm – _so_ incredibly warm – against mine. His skin would smell good.

I shiver in my palatial forest bed and hope he just wants to… _have_ me…tonight. To climb over me and tug up my nightgown and do what boys do in back alleys and behind the Hob: a few quick grunts between my thighs while he gropes my breasts and pants hotly at my neck. I’ve seen it from the corner of my eye, learned the science behind it in school, even caught glimpses of it in the arena, but I don’t have a clue how it works in reality. I think it’s supposed to hurt – a lot – the first time.

I wonder if I should take off the rest of my clothes, so I’m naked when he gets here.

I bury my face in the sweet pine pillow and cry. _No no no no no._ I’m not ready for this. I didn’t expect it. I don’t want it. I want Peeta to give me a list of chores, find me a little cupboard to sleep in, and bring me out for a conversation every now and then, like I told Gale – like I believed Peeta wanted, when I told Gale. I’m not desirable – I’m just one of a thousand scrawny Seam brats with black hair and muddy skin and sooty eyes – and I certainly didn’t come cheap. He could’ve had anyone in Twelve for a night, a month – forever, even – without money or gifts. With no strings at all. Why, why, _why_ did he come to our house in that storm and offer Mom and Prim lifelong comfort in exchange for me?

I’m half-asleep, exhausted by fear and weeping – despite Lavinia’s best efforts, my cheeks are rough and burning from tears – when I hear the footsteps. Every nerve in my body is instantly alert, on edge. My heartbeat pounds, thick and eerily slow, at my temples. For the first time, I understand how my prey must feel. The terror is blinding and nauseating.

The steps are soft but heavy. It’s not willowy Lavinia; she moves like a doe. The steps are uneven…is it the effect of a prosthesis on an ordinary gait or just hesitation? It could be the other Avox, the one I haven’t met yet.

The footsteps stop on the opposite side of the bed. I hear the quiet sounds of someone undressing: fabric tugged over flesh, the shift in breath as garments are removed and discarded. It seems to take a long time, as though the person is stripping completely. I press a fist to my mouth to stifle a cry.

The blankets are slowly turned back. The bed is almost impossibly wide, but the movement still uncovers my back and shoulders. The person sighs. The weight of a body settles on the opposite side of the mattress. I stop breathing and bite my lip hard to hold back a whimper.

It can’t be Peeta.

I said I’d do whatever he wants.

The blankets are drawn up again. I let out a shallow, shaky breath and wait for the hand. The hand at my shoulder, turning me onto my back, or maybe the hand at my thigh, tugging up my nightgown. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe evenly. Maybe he’ll leave me alone tonight if he thinks I’m already asleep.

I think of his body under the bearskin, so warm and smelling so good, and try to imagine the rest. A man who shared his coat with me, who warmed my feet with his hands and made me hot chocolate…it wouldn’t be horrible. I know little enough about sex, but I know he’ll be kind. And…I’ll let him, because I owe him, more than I could ever dream of repaying.

The silence in the room is heavy, suffocating, as the wait stretches on. I can feel the person’s eyes on my back. I have to say something. After all, maybe it’s _not_ Peeta. Maybe Lavinia’s heavier-footed than I thought, and I’m getting caught up in this terror for nothing.

But the longer I wait, the less right – and more foolish – it seems to speak up. If I was going to say something, I should’ve done so right away. And I can’t turn over to see who it is, because if it _is_ Peeta, he’ll know I’m awake and then there’s nothing to stop him forcing himself on me.

The person shifts under the blankets – my body goes rigid with anticipation – and gives a quiet moan. A sound so full of longing and loneliness that my heart aches in reply.

It’s the only sound they make before their breath evens out in slumber some ten minutes later. I lie awake much longer, cold and untouched and deeply confused, wondering how another person’s presence can make a bed feel so painfully empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you didn't catch it, the necessary canon deviation is that Katniss has not encountered Lavinia before coming to Peeta's house (i.e., witnessing her capture in the woods). In light of everything else that was happening in this chapter and Katniss's fear about Peeta's intentions toward her, the last thing I wanted was for her to feel guilty or even fearful of his housekeeper, so I simply eliminated that chance meeting. Everything still took place according to canon (Lavinia and her boyfriend fled the Capitol, made it to Twelve, etc.), the only difference is that Gale and Katniss didn't see the capture.


	7. A Never-Ending Feast (Part One)

_…a table appeared, set with the finest meal one could imagine.  
_ _Never before had the girl tasted such food.  
_ ~ _East of the Sun and West of the Moon,_ retold by Kathleen and Michael Hague 

I wake up hungry. Not gnawing ache hungry, nor the too-familiar numbness that comes from long-term hunger; just plain _hungry_. Like in the days when food was sufficient – not plentiful, but sufficient. The hearty fare yesterday – Peeta’s hamper, the rolls and cookies, the luxurious hot chocolate and apple – has stirred up my long-suppressed appetite. I want breakfast, and for the first time in a long time, my mind’s not telling my body not to get its hopes up.

I’m alone in the massive bed with the covers tucked snugly around me. Every last bit of my body is toasty warm, from my bare feet, buried beneath layers of soft blankets, to the tip of my nose, currently burrowed into the silky pile of the fox fur coverlet. Amidst the slightly musky scent of the fur, I smell cinnamon, fragrant burning wood, and sharp, sweet pine, whispering through the linen of the pillow beneath my cheek.

I’m so deliciously content that I don’t want to move – until my bladder gives an impatient twinge, reminding me that I need to find the bathroom, and promptly. I open my eyes with a reluctant groan to find the room bathed in bright, pale winter sunlight from the windows above the bed. I slept too well and far too long; it must be mid-morning at the very least.

I turn back the blankets and shift up onto my knees to peer out the window. The glass is delicately painted with swirling feathers of frost, made iridescent by the morning sun. Beyond, I glimpse forest: an endless expanse of treetops, their barren branches traced with snow. A lonely sight, perhaps, but at this moment, one of the most comforting I’ve ever seen. This is the view from my bedroom – from my bed itself. I live in the woods now.

Smiling at the thought, I look back from the window and take in the bedroom at a glance. The fireplace of wild rock, banked with fresh logs; the evergreen walls – in daylight I see that they’re textured with pine-needle-like indents, as though someone pressed a branch into the wet paint to create patterns – the dark wood furniture; the fur coverlet. In more ways than one, I live in the woods now.

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, resigned at last to getting up. As my bare feet sink into the plush fur rug, I recoil, gasping, at a sudden, terrifying influx of memory. The white bear’s fur against my feet as he lay behind me in the dream. Huddling inside Peeta’s bearskin for warmth in the sleigh. Shivering with fear under a blanket of fur as a stranger came to my bed – a silent stranger, but for that sad, low moan and the soft breath of slumber.

My own breathing comes hard and frantic as my mind races over parts of my body. Nothing hurts. Nothing feels any different, really. I’m warm and comfortable, more so than I’ve ever been in my life.

Could Peeta have… _done it_ …and I didn’t know? Could _anyone_ be that gentle? Could he have… _had_ me while I was asleep – or could the hot chocolate have been drugged? I was scared last night – terrified, even. Could I have blacked out during the act – or forgotten it all, in the shock? I’ve heard of things like that happening before. Mom’s treated girls who’ve gone through it. Cray’s girls, mostly, who forget what happened to them till they see the blood and bruises on their bodies.

I tug up my nightgown frantically. The little lace-trimmed shorts are still as they were when I put them on yesterday afternoon. There’s no blood, on my thighs or on the fabric. Either Peeta wanted me awake or…maybe he didn’t want me at all. Maybe I’d been right all along. Or maybe I’d imagined the whole thing, and no one came to my bed last night.

I lower the skirt of my nightgown again and turn to look at the pillows on the opposite side of the bed. If there had ever been the indent of a head, it’s since been carefully smoothed away – and any imprint of a body from the blankets as well. When I woke, they were nestled around me like a cocoon, as though I was the only person in the bed. Lavinia had tucked me in before she left last night, pulling the blankets up to my chin; I remember that for certain. But I don’t remember her tucking the blankets so snugly against my back, as they were when I woke.

My bladder twinges again; my panic isn’t doing it any favors. There’s a door to the left of the fireplace; I recall Lavinia going through it last night to get a warm washcloth. Hopeful, I pad across the fur rug to open the door and suck in my breath at the sight of the room beyond. In astonishment, but also because I feel like I’ve been plunged underwater.

The bathroom, for so it is, has a floor of earthy gray stone and walls of a drowned, deep-water blue, so skillfully painted that they appear to be liquid. As though a hand placed on the wall would sink, at least to the wrist, beneath its fluid surface. Straight ahead, beneath a window twice as broad as the span of my arms, is the toilet and, on the wall to its right, a tall, round-bowled sink. Both are made of some sleek silvery-blue material and simple enough in construction, albeit a hundred times finer than our crude facilities in the Seam. Next to the sink is a closed door that must lead to the hallway.

I’m momentarily horrified at the idea of such large, prominent windows in the bathroom – they take up nearly all of the north wall and half of the east – till I realize there’s no one out here to see. The room stands at tree level, and no one lives in the woods but us. Still, I tug the curtains – they’re filmy and pearlescent gray, almost cloudlike – closed before using the toilet.

Built into the corner of the room to the left of the toilet is an enormous round bathtub, big enough for two or even three people to use at once. The bowl of the tub is made of wild rock – like my fireplace, only polished smooth – and the square surround is painted with tiny fish and water plants in breathtaking detail, with katniss leaves – and blooms – spilling across the ledge at the top. As I look at the tub, I can feel the slick brush of water weeds against my calves and the playful nips of the painted minnows at my toes. The katniss plants are so superbly depicted, it seems you could tangle your fingers in their slender spikes as you reclined.

Bathing in this tub – you could very nearly _swim_ in it, broad as it is – would be like soaking in a hidden pool in the woods. Except, of course, the tub has a water tap – or rather, two of them. One for hot water, one for cold. I try to imagine having enough hot water to fill this tub and fail miserably. It would take four times the amount of water I bathed in last night, and by the time the last of it was boiled, the first would be cold.

Adjacent to the tub – taking up almost a third of the large room – is something I can’t identify and so approach cautiously. If this was a Merchant house, it might be a shower, but it’s nothing like the shower in Madge’s house. Built of the same wild rock as the tub, it looks like a cave – a roofless, rectangular cave – with overlapping panels of cloudy, watery blue glass across its mouth. I carefully slide one panel open and peer inside.

It _is_ a cave. A cave with a floor like sand, pleasingly rough against my callused feet, that slopes to a silver-screened drain in the center. To either side of me are craggy walls of rock, haphazardly piled to leave all manner of ridges and hollows, and straight ahead, at about the level of my thighs, is an outcropping; a primitive bench, really, also made of rock, albeit smoothed for comfort, like the tub. Above the bench is yet another large window, spanning the length of the strange cave-room, with a broad ledge that holds an assortment of slim plastic bottles.

Curious, I step inside for a closer look at the ledge’s strange contents. They’re soaps; Capitol-crafted liquid soaps for face and hair and body. The cave is a shower.

I look around me in surprise. There are no taps, no spouts, no buttons or knobs in sight; the patch of ceiling above has a vent, nothing more. There’s no way to get water out of the rocks, nor any place for it to come from. And yet, that’s clearly what this strange room is used for. The floor is damp beneath my bare feet, and I stretch out a hand to one rock wall to find it wet as well. Someone showered here recently.

_Peeta._

I should have known at once. The faint lingering scent of fine soap – honey and cream and cloves, rich and comforting – it’s part of his personal smell. I think of his hand on the rock wall, like mine, as he stands here, naked, and I tremble with something that isn’t quite fear.

I have next to no experience with naked men. Glimpses from the Games, of course, though I’m quick to cover Prim’s eyes and turn away myself at the slightest warning, and Mom’s patients, now and again, are undressed entirely for treatment. In that respect, Prim’s far more mature than I am. She once helped patch up a miner with a thigh wound that cut perilously close to his groin. I don’t know which was more unsettling: the ragged, bloody gash in his flesh or the sight of my little sister nimbly stitching it closed, the back of her small hand practically brushing his genitals.

I have no experience whatsoever with fit and healthy naked young men, let alone living under the same roof as one, and my cheeks burn at the thought of it. I’ve seen Peeta in his wrestling uniform and shirtless in the Tribute Parade; the rest is not difficult to fill in. The firm curve of his backside, the narrow dip of his hips…

I duck out of the cave-shower, splash my hot face at the sink, and go quickly back to my room. I notice now what I had missed earlier: an assortment of clothing – none of which came from my foraging bag – has been laid out for me, draped over the rack in front of the fireplace. There’s a long green-and-gray plaid skirt of heavy wool, paired with soft gray tights. A pair of corduroy trousers, the color of strong coffee and velvety under my fingers – as I’d imagined Peeta’s would be, last night in his living room.

I shake away the thought and continue my examination of the garments. There are two sweaters, one forest green and the other pebble gray, both robustly woven of hearty wool. They’ll itch a little, I suspect, but be so warm that I won’t care in the least. Next to them, conveniently enough, is a long-sleeved cream-colored undershirt, soft and weightless as duck down. Below the rack is a pair of stout black shoes with buckles, new but supple, with a pair of thick wool socks resting across them.

I try to guess at what my chores will be, based on these clothes. Everything is sturdy and warm; practical, really, even the skirt. Outside, then. Chopping wood, probably, and maybe mucking out Rye’s stable. I don’t mind working outside – I’d prefer it, even – and it looks like a beautiful winter day. Maybe I’ll have a few free moments to scout the woods and get a feel for the game out here.

I find Mom’s camisole, folded neatly on top of the nearest dresser, and slip that on first of all. I hardly need the undergarment, but it feels wrong, vulgar almost, putting on these fine new clothes – Merchant clothes – over my bare breasts. I dress in the corduroys, the soft undershirt, and the green sweater, reasoning that I can always take off a layer if I get too warm, and find the fit surprisingly good. Not perfect, but much closer than I expected.

Peeta would have guessed at my size when he bought the clothes yesterday. He has an artist’s eye for detail, of course, but it still feels strange for him to have thought about the proportions of my body. He would’ve done it for Prim as well when he purchased her coat and boots, but this feels different, somehow. More intimate. I imagine Peeta holding up the corduroys, envisioning my hips in them, and frown. The trousers are about a half-size too large, but I suspect that, like Prim’s coat, he did that deliberately, intending for me to gain back the weight I lost this winter. Which means that Peeta, in fact, has a _very_ good understanding of the shape and size of my body. My heart gives a funny little stumble at the thought.

I sit at the little dressing table to tug on the socks and shoes – also an impressively close fit – and brush and rebraid my hair. It’s mussed and tangled from sleep, like a mass of black cobwebs, and I shake my head at the foolishness of having left it loose all night. Having my hair brushed out by Lavinia was an unexpected treat, but I should’ve listened to common sense and rebraided it when she was finished. I know better than to try to be pretty.

I’m too late for breakfast, I’m sure, but I doubt Peeta will make me go hungry. Another apple would do for me; an apple and some tea – _and maybe,_ I dare to hope, _a piece of bread._ I slip out of my room and into the brightly lit corridor beyond. Tomorrow, of course, I’ll be making his breakfast. I wonder if he has a big appetite, and how I’ll ever manage a meal on that massive stove.

The smell meets me on the stairs. Griddle cakes, frying in real butter. Cooked fruit, mouthwateringly ripe and richly spiced. Sizzling meat, seasoned and cured – _sausage_ , I realize. And fresh bread, yeasty and baked to perfection.

My hands start to shake. I thought the bakery was the most amazing thing I’d ever smelled, but this onslaught of delicious odors is almost crippling. Hunger roars up in my belly, growling and furious. I _want_ , so badly that my vision goes spotty.

I grasp the railing with both hands and try to collect myself. Peeta’s kind – unbelievably kind and generous – but that’s no reason to assume that any of that cooking food is intended for me. He’ll see that I’m fed, of course, but there’s no need to do it so extravagantly. I’m just a servant, after all. Bread and a little cold meat is more than enough for me – more than I’ve had at home for most of this winter.

But _oh, that frying sausage!_ I can nearly taste it in the air, and it stirs an almost feral urge to grab and tear and fill my mouth.

 _I’ll bargain_ , I decide, combating the urge with reason. I’m a tough trader, after all. I have little enough to trade with, and less still that anyone here would want, but Lavinia – it’ll be her that’s cooking, of course – is from the Capitol; she might not know the going rate for things out here. Of the few precious items I brought with me, which can I bear to part with?

Mom’s dress. I don’t need it, really. I know why she sent it now. _You should have something pretty to wear when – he takes you to his bed._ She wanted so badly for me to go to Peeta as a bride, finely dressed and gently perfumed.

I don’t have a clue what Peeta wants of me, but it didn’t seem to matter what I was wearing last night. I don’t know who – or for that matter, if _anyone_ – came to my bed. Really, there’s no reason to hold on to a pretty dress that I’ll never have occasion to wear – and the leaf green will look amazing on Lavinia, with her porcelain skin and dark red hair. It’s not up to Capitol standard, but it’s certainly Merchant quality. It should barter a portion of sausage, at least; maybe even one griddle cake.

I descend the last of the stairs and consider whether I’m being too hasty. I might need something later, something more vital than sausage. Maybe I should save the dress for a more pressing need.

Then I think of the Games and sponsors, of the escalating cost of gifts the longer the Games drag on. Of how what buys a full meal on day one buys a cracker on day twelve. Lavinia’s from the Capitol, so she probably plays by their rules. My very best chance of trading a Merchant dress for meat is today. Right now. I step into the kitchen.

It’s not Lavinia, it’s Peeta. Standing over his enormous copper stove and fussing with a range full of saucepans, the sleeves of his dark blue sweater pushed to his elbows. My heart plunges into my stomach. There will be no bargain now. Peeta will have no interest whatsoever in my mother’s clothing, and besides, it would take far more than a twenty-year-old Merchant dress, much-mended and made-over, to buy a plate of what he’s preparing.

I must make some sound of dismay, because Peeta suddenly looks up from his work, spies me in the kitchen doorway, and beams. “Good morning, Katniss,” he says cheerfully. “I see the clothes fit.” He blushes a little at that. “I hope you didn’t feel you had to wear the ones Lavinia put out; there are more in the dresser.”

Before I can wrap my mind around _more clothes in the dresser_ , he asks, “Did you sleep all right?”

“Yes,” I tell him, though I narrowly bite back adding, _Weren’t you there?_ His expression gives nothing away; he looks, more than anything, _delighted_. Certainly neither guilty nor nervous. _Could_ he have been the stranger in my bed? Could his have been the hand that drew back my blankets, then drew them up again to cover us both? Was it _his_ warm weight on the mattress opposite me? Surely this radiant young man can’t be the person who made that strange sad sound.

“I’m sorry I slept so late,” I say, never mind he told me I could. “I’ll be up tomorrow in time to make breakfast.” I come a little closer to see the contents of the stove – _to see what he expects of me,_ I tell myself, nothing more – and my stomach gives a silent, painful howl.

Apple cider and cinnamon sticks simmer cozily in one saucepan at the back of the range; another holds peach slices, bubbling in syrup over a low flame. A large skillet stands empty, slick with melted butter, with a tall stack of griddle cakes on a platter beside it, and the small skillet on the burner opposite is filled with scrambled eggs, fluffy and sprinkled with herbs. At home, we scramble our eggs – any eggs I can scavenge, however tiny – to make them stretch farther. These will be proper chicken eggs, scrambled simply for the pleasure of it. Yet another skillet holds the sausages I want so badly, brown and crisp and and sizzling lazily in their own juices. Down the counter are two perfect round loaves of bread, golden and cooling.

I lick my dry lips and look up to see Peeta frowning slightly at me. I wonder if he’s mad at me for getting up late or for nosing around his stove like a Seam urchin. Except he doesn’t quite look angry. “Um…do you want me to serve you?” I offer, a little helplessly. It’s the only thing I can think of, seeing as he’s prepared a week’s worth of food.

His frown clears, like a cloud passing the sun. He chuckles gently. “No, I’ll do that,” he says, smiling. He pulls out a chair for me at the table, directly in front of a yet another platter of griddle cakes. I sit as directed and press my palms hard against the underside of the table, fighting the urge to snatch one up. _Not for me, not for me, not for me,_ my mind chants frantically.

And Peeta _does_ take the platter away, carrying it over to the stove. “I was actually going to bring you up a tray in another minute or two,” he says over his shoulder. “I figured you might be tired after yesterday.”

I watch him ladle peaches over the mountain of griddle cakes and scoop a heaping pile of eggs onto the emptiest side of the platter. From the sizzling skillet he takes three sausages, then pauses a moment before adding a fourth to the platter as well. He carries the platter back to the table and splashes over the peaches with cream from a little ceramic pitcher, then places it back in front of me. “What would you like to drink?” he asks.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. The tall glass and mug above the plate, the knife and fork and spoon to either side. I’m poor, not primitive. This was a place setting to begin with.

I stare down at what I had mistaken for a serving platter. It holds more food than my entire family would eat in a day. And Peeta’s just given it to me casually, as though this sort of thing is too regular an occurrence to bear remarking on.

“I’ve made coffee,” he explains, gesturing at the silver stovepot on the table, an elegant cousin to what my mother uses at home. “I never liked it much before,” he admits, “but this makes a really good cup.” Next to the coffee pot stand a small peppermill and a salt shaker, the tiny bottle containing more salt than my family’s had in a month. I realize I won’t need either. It feels almost offensive, adding to something Peeta clearly took great pains to prepare.

“Otherwise, I’ve got cider,” he goes on. “I keep it simmering most days – but I can make tea if you’d rather have that. There’s milk and orange juice too…or I could make hot chocolate again?”

I’d hoped for tea at the most, and would’ve been content with a cup of water. “Um…cider?” I say weakly.

Peeta smiles. He takes the mug – the same bowl-sized one he filled with hot chocolate last night – ladles in three scoops of the simmering cider, and sets it to the right of my plate. “Do you mind if I eat with you?” he asks.

I have decent table manners, thanks to Mom. Does he think I’m embarrassed have him watch me eat – or will _I_ embarrass _him_? “When else would you eat?” I ask in reply.

He shrugs good-naturedly. “When you’re done,” he says.

I frown. This is all backwards. Peeta serving me food, asking if I mind _him_ eating with _me_. “Eat now,” I tell him, a little too sharply. “I’d feel stupid eating with you just waiting around.”

Peeta nods and goes to make himself a plate, but my restraint is exhausted. I pick up the fork and devour, all the while forcing myself to go slowly, to chew every bite thoroughly before swallowing, to _not_ pick up the food with my fingers, no matter how hungry I am or how badly I want to. The cream-drenched peaches are tender, simmered with brown sugar and nutmeg; the griddle cakes hearty and filled with oats and finely chopped nuts. The sausages – real pork sausage, perfectly fried and slightly sweet – taste of sage and apple. The eggs are airy and lightly seasoned with pepper and thyme, the perfect counterpart to the other rich flavors.

Peeta sits in the chair nearest me, but I hardly notice. My throat is sore all of a sudden; I wonder if I caught a cold in the sleigh last night. I take a long drink of cider, hoping the heat and cinnamon will soothe it. I have a sniffle too – from the steaming hot food, I assume. I stare down at my plate as I eagerly eat bite after bite after bite.

I don’t realize what’s happening to me until the tear strikes the edge of my plate with a ping.

Peeta’s out of his chair and crouched beside mine before I’m even aware that he moved. “Katniss, what’s wrong?” he asks gently, his kind face concerned. “Is something wrong with the food?”

“You…fed me,” I choke, stupidly, because there are too many words to say what I really mean. _I was prepared to trade one of my mother’s last gifts for a few bites of this food, and you gave me this huge plateful without me even having to ask._

“I said I would,” he says softly. His lips are smiling, but his bright eyes are sad.

“You said…you said you’d ‘take care of me,’” I recall, sniffling noisily. For some reason, it’s imperative that he understand this – that, in fact, he’d promised very little.

He takes a handkerchief from his left hip pocket and offers it to me. “I also said you’d have the very best I can give you,” he reminds me. “I meant to ask if this –” he gestures up at my plate – “was good enough. I hoped it would be, but…your reaction has me a little confused.”

I silently take the handkerchief from him and notice for the first time the scrap of red cloth tied around his left wrist. His sleeves are still pushed up from cooking, or I’d never have seen it. I recognize it immediately; I just didn’t expect to see it here.

It’s his district token. Nobody knows where it came from or what it means, just that it means a lot to Peeta. In the arena, especially at night, he would tug back the cuff of his jacket and press his lips against the fabric, almost desperately. Wishing, hoping, longing; no one was quite sure, but, regardless, he did it fiercely. It would’ve been filthy by the end, muddied and stained with blood and body soil, but he never took it off. People wondered if it was something to do with the girl he loved, but I figured it was from his father. After all, if this girl didn’t know he was alive, why would she have given him a token to take into the arena?

I wipe my nose with Peeta’s handkerchief and redirect my eyes to his face. He’s still waiting for a reply, his expression tentatively hopeful. “It’s – more than good enough,” I tell him, and his smile is so wide it makes my chest hurt. “It’s _too_ good,” I elaborate, both from guilt and the need to alleviate that strange pressure around my heart. “Too much.”

“Too much food?” Peeta puzzles, eyeing my half-devoured plate. I understand his confusion, a little. He knows my family’s been living on almost nothing, and if the portion is generous, it’s unlikely a starving person would complain.

“Too much for _me_ ,” I explain. “I’m just…you could’ve just given me an apple or something.”

His sweet, gentle eyes turn suddenly intense, almost angry. “You’re not ‘just’ _anything_ , Katniss,” he says hotly. “And as for the rest: I’ve been looking forward to this morning for a long time. Nothing in the world could’ve persuaded me to offer you a mere apple as a meal.”

And then, all at once, his fire is gone. “Unless…” he says, blushing sheepishly, “unless that’s what you really wanted. If that’s what you asked me for.”

I wonder if he has any idea how ridiculous he sounds. Is his feast _good enough_ for me? He’d never give me an apple as a meal, unless it’s what I _asked him for_? It’s like the invent-as-you-go reasoning of a small child, except it doesn’t _feel_ silly. I feel strangely warm at his words, and blame it on the layers of clothing and the rich food in my belly. “It’s good,” I reassure him. “It’s – perfect.”

He smiles, looking relieved, and gets back into his chair. The movement is a little stilted; I wonder if crouching is painful with his prosthesis.

We continue our meal in silence, but the brief pause gave my brain and belly time to communicate. I realize I’m full, almost uncomfortably so, and set down my fork. Peeta looks up at the sound, and I distract myself with my mug, taking slow sips of the spicy-sweet cider to soothe my stretched stomach – and draw my vision away from his curious frown.

“Would you like more of anything?” he asks.

I glance between him and the partial plate of food still in front of me. “I’m full, I think,” I tell him. “But thanks.”

He reaches over – I assume to take my plate away or maybe to refill it, despite what I said – but instead his hand carefully encircles my wrist. Spanning it, I realize. I know his hands are big, but his thumb and forefinger meet too easily – overlap one another – around the stark, prominent bones.

Peeta’s thumb traces a tendon in my wrist, making me shiver. His brow furrows worriedly. “ _Please_ eat more,” he says, almost pleading. “Have all you want.”

“Why, so you can eat me in a month when I’m fattened up?” I retort. I say it snidely, but it comes out sounding so absurd that I immediately laugh at myself. Peeta stares at me for a moment, startled, then laughs too. The sound of his laughter, coupled with the gentle grasp of his hand around my wrist, makes the strange, startling warmth flare up inside me once more.

The laughter must shake my stomach up a bit, because I manage to clean my plate after all. I’m extremely full – fuller than I think I’ve ever been in my life – but not painfully so. I get up, collecting my dishes to take to the sink, but Peeta’s already on his feet, taking them from me. “I’ll do that,” he assures me with a smile.

My confusion increases yet again. I didn’t cook, I didn’t serve, and he doesn’t want me to clean up. “What would you like me to do, then?” I ask, more than a little exasperation creeping into my voice.

I know there must be no end of cleaning to do in a house like this, but Peeta seems in no hurry to assign my tasks. In fact, he’s grinning like a child given a long-awaited toy. “Do you skate, Katniss?” he asks. His voice is downright playful.

“W-what?” I sputter.

“The ice is thick enough for the sleigh,” he explains, “so I imagine it’s perfect for skating. I know you go to the lake, but I didn’t know about…during the winter.”

My brain hurtles past skating and sleighs to _I know you go to the lake_. “Wait…how do you know that?” I rasp.

“Well, you sell fish and ducks at the Hob,” he reminds me with a crooked smile. “And…” His eyes drop to the dishes in his hands. “I’ve seen you a few times,” he admits. “Gathering plants. Hunting and fishing. Swimming, once.”

I look away, my cheeks hot. Of course. Peeta lives on the other side of the lake, too far to see anything from his house, but coming and going – especially during warmer weather – he’d follow the lakeshore back to town. He might’ve gone right by me with his pony and cart, a dozen times or more. How had I never seen or heard him?

This is weighty information, and for a moment I can’t breathe. Peeta could turn me in to the Peacekeepers for this. At the very least, I’d get a lashing; I could even be executed. But then, if he wants me dead, he’s going about it a rather expensive way.

I feel his eyes on me again and force myself to meet them. “Who would I tell, Katniss?” he asks softly. “And why? You fed a lot of families, including your own. And…” He gives me a small, sad smile. “You seemed happy out there,” he says.

Once again, I’m shamed by his kindness – and how well he knows me. I _am_ happiest in the woods – and at the lake – but I thought only Gale and Prim knew that. Somehow, it doesn’t irk me that Peeta knows this too. He could’ve used the knowledge against me, but instead he brought me to live in this perfect house in the woods, knowing – or at least, guessing – that I could be happy here.

“Will – with you being gone – will anyone still do that?” he asks. “The hunting and gathering, I mean.”

“Gale will,” I tell him. “But he works in the mines now, so he’ll have less time, and no one to help him.”

Peeta nods absently. He looks contemplative, almost distant, as though he’s working out a tricky puzzle in his mind, then his vision abruptly clears and focuses on me once more. “So, is that a yes or no to skating?” he wonders, grinning.

“I don’t have skates,” I point out needlessly.

His grin broadens. “Yes, you do,” he corrects. “Come here.”

He ushers me, almost giddily, out to the foyer, where he picks up a strange pair of what look like sandals from the floor next to my hunting boots. He hands them to me, still grinning, and I turn them over in my hands, fascinated. I’ve never had skates; never even _seen_ a pair before, let alone held one. They’re simply constructed: a blunt silver blade, curling up at one end, anchored beneath a foot-shaped platform, with wide leather straps at the toe and ankle. I could wear them with almost any kind of shoe, and the size wouldn’t matter overmuch, as long as the straps were snug.

Peeta bought me skates. He’s sending me to play in the snow like a child. I haven’t done that since Dad died. I think of us pretend-skating, scooting across the ice in our worn old boots, a mere week before the explosion that took his life – and wonder if I can bear it.

I gorged myself at breakfast. I need the exertion. And I told Peeta I’d do whatever he wants. “Thanks,” I manage, even chasing up a tight smile for him. “These’ll fit over my boots, right?”

Peeta looks uncomfortable, nervous even, and I know it’s not about the boots, which will clearly work with the skates. “Um…if you want…” he says, and his voice is a little unsteady, “I have…well, a few other things you can wear outside.”

I follow him into the living room, and my mouth falls open at what waits for me there. Warming in front of the fire is a pair of boots that could be a twin to Prim’s. Fawn-colored suede, lacing to the knees, lined with fleece. A Merchant girl’s dream of new boots; the very best to be found in the district.

The coat next to them, however, carefully draped over its warming rack, has never seen its like in Twelve before. The style is somewhat like Prim’s; the coat is made of fine wool and cut long, to cover my hips. But there the similarity ends.

It’s red – bright, deep red, like strawberries and new blood – with buttons of polished bone and vines of embroidered white flowers and deep green leaves on either side of them, trailing from collar to hem. Katniss flowers and arrowhead leaves. Again, always, katniss.

And _fur_. The coat has a voluminous hood, trimmed and lined with thick white fur. A quick glance reveals that the hem and cuffs are fur-trimmed too. I can’t stop my fingers from reaching out, from stroking it eagerly, and I moan a little at the sleek softness.

I catch up one sleeve, meaning only to touch the cuff, and find it far heavier than I would’ve expected, even for a garment of good wool. Frowning, I crouch down for a closer look and confirm what I almost can’t believe. It’s not just the hood: the _entire coat_ is lined with white fur. A fur I know well, though I’ve never touched it with my bare hand.

I wouldn’t be much of a hunter if I didn’t recognize it.

“Peeta,” I choke. He doesn’t reply, and I don’t look up to see his face. “This is your bear’s fur,” I say weakly.

“It was a big bear,” he answers. His voice is tight and strange.

I look up at him, frowning. His cheekbones are stained painfully dark, but not with embarrassment. There’s something he’s not telling me, something he’s almost afraid I might understand.

He didn’t buy this coat in town yesterday. He couldn’t have ordered it from the Capitol yesterday. And it’s unlikely that when his stylist cut up the bear’s pelt to make his coat, she was intending to save any of it for a future use. Which means this coat was made the same time as his, or very near. He’ll have had it since the Victory Tour, at the very least – a month or more. And with its bone buttons – are they from the bear as well? – and my namesake embroidered down the front, it couldn’t have been made for anyone else.

 _Why did you have a coat made for me, with your own hard-won fur?_ I want to demand. _Were you already planning for this on your Victory Tour – for our bargain, for me living in your house?_ And most perplexing of all: Why _am I here? Why did you want me? Why do you shower me with rich food and gifts and comfort, when I am here to serve_ you _?_  

His eyes darken a little. I wonder if he can read my thoughts in my eyes, and give voice to none of them. “Peeta, this is too much,” I say instead.

“Do you like it?” he asks. His voice is still strange, tight and edged. Not angry, not disappointed, but strained; like a man reaching the limits of his endurance.

“Yes,” I whisper. My fingers are still greedily, irrationally curled around one fur cuff, as though if I let go, this fairytale coat might vanish into thin air or, at the very least, be taken away from me.

Peeta visibly relaxes, melting back into himself. “Then it’s not too much,” he says, his lips curving up again in his familiar smile. “It’s exactly right.” He pauses a moment before adding, “Although…it’s not practical, I suppose –”

“It’s perfect,” I assure him, for the second time this morning, as I get to my feet.

Peeta gestures for me to turn around and helps me into the coat. I sigh gustily as the heft of it settles at my shoulders, caught up in the magnificent feel of the lining. Thick silky fur, dense and heavy and warm from the fire; it’s exactly like being inside Peeta’s bearskin again, only without Peeta. The realization is at once delicious and slightly hollow.

My body is covered by the sweater and corduroys, of course, but my wrists and neck are exposed to the coat’s lining, and the feel of the white bear’s fur on those tiny patches of bare skin is almost intoxicating. A mad part of me wants to shed a layer of clothes, maybe all of them; to feel the fur against my naked body. My cheeks burn at the thought and I brush it aside in favor of a deeper emotion: sheer, almost exhausting relief that the coat _fits_.

Like the clothing, the coat is slightly large on me; a full size, at least. A perfect fit during the cold months, when I might be wearing any number of layers underneath. If it had been too small – this decadent dream of a coat, made just for me – I think my heart would have broken. Not for my loss, but for Peeta’s. The boy who doesn’t know me – who _can’t_ know me – who’d barely spoken a word to me in his life before yesterday…who had a coat made for me, lined with the most precious fur in Panem and embellished with the blossoms of the common water plant that gave me my name.

He turns me around again and smiles broadly, my relief mirrored in his eyes. “May I?” he asks, demonstratively tugging the coat’s edges together. I shrug, and he begins slotting the bone buttons. I squirm a little as his strong, deft fingers inch purposefully down my body, coaxing buttons through snugly stitched buttonholes that have never been used before, but the coat is too thick for me to feel more than a fleeting pressure at his touch.

When he’s finished encasing me from neck to knees in cherry red wool and white bear’s fur, he reaches behind my neck with both hands and raises the hood, draping it over my head with a playful smile. It’s deep and roomy and almost unbelievably warm; I can feel fur against my ears and cheeks and half want to sink into the fireside armchair, to burrow into this coat and sleep away the winter like a bear.

“Good enough?” Peeta asks hopefully, his eyes dancing.

“Too good,” I reply, but I can’t resist returning his smile.

I _do_ sit for a little then, because Peeta wants to help me on with the new boots as well. My leather hunting boots have contoured to my feet and calves after so many wearings, but there’s something even better about having laces – to say nothing of the plush fleece lining, reaching from my toes to just below my knees. And they’re a decent fit on top of it. I can well imagine how Prim must’ve felt when the baker first laced her into her new boots. No wonder she had flown out of the house to show Vick and Rory. As indolent as I feel in the coat, with these boots on, I can scarcely sit still. Suddenly, skating seems very much the order of the day.

Peeta produces three more gifts, not nearly so expensive as the coat but equally warm and beautiful. A pair of butter-soft brown leather gloves, lined with fur – rabbit this time – and a scarf and stocking cap, both of an earthy evergreen shade, trimmed with tiny embroidered pinecones and far softer than anything knitted can possibly be. It must be wool; it _looks like_ wool, and yet it feels like fur. Thoroughly confused, I run a few inches of the scarf between my fingers and give Peeta an inquiring look.

“Do you like it?” he asks, smiling. “It’s rabbit hair.”

“Hair?” I frown. Rabbits have _fur_ ; sleek, soft fur, like what lines my new gloves. I’ve skinned enough of them to know.

“It’s a special long-haired rabbit,” he explains. “They shear them like sheep and blend the hair with wool. Portia, my stylist, has a coat made of it – soft, like fur, but much lighter.”

I push back the hood for a moment to pull on the downy cap and adjust my braid – the hood drapes perfectly in the back to accommodate it – then raise the hood again and wrap the scarf around my neck. I’m so warm it’s ridiculous. “Are you sure about this?” I ask Peeta, frowning, as I pull on the fur-lined gloves. _Shouldn’t I be doing the dishes?_ I add silently. _Or your laundry, or –_

“Entirely sure,” he replies, smiling. He retrieves the skates from the floor, where I set them when I put on the coat, and presses them into my hands. “Go on; enjoy yourself,” he urges me. “I’ll give you a tour when you get back.”

Since Dad died, I’ve done precious few things just for the pleasure of it, and on the whole, I haven’t missed them. But standing in Peeta’s living room, bundled head-to-foot in warm luxury, gazing out his windows at the frozen lake with a pair of skates in my hands, I positively _ache_ to be out there.

Peeta doesn’t have to prompt me again. I burst out the front door, only to pause on the stone steps to breathe deeply of the sharp, crystalline air. There’s no taint of coal or soot, only the resin of pines and a tickle of woodsmoke amid the pure, sweet cold. Curious, I stick my tongue out a little, tasting the air like a snake. It’s nothing like Twelve. We left the district last night…did we travel farther than I thought? Is this the same lake I used to harvest from when I crept beneath the perimeter fence?

I scurry down the steps into the blue-white snow; it shimmers, diamond-like, in the late morning sun. The drifts are deep, up to my knees and higher, but someone’s cleared a path to the edge of the lake, maybe thirty feet ahead. A little bench stands there, crafted of wrought iron with wood slats forming the seat. Another overlook for this beautiful scene – and practical for my purposes too.

I sit on the bench and carefully strap the skates onto my new boots, eager and confident. I’m agile and coordinated; not graceful, maybe, but certainly capable of maintaining my balance even on the most precarious of tree limbs. So when I stand up for the first time, balanced on the blades, and my legs wobble like a newborn kid’s, I hardly know what to think – and that’s on snow-packed ground, not ice.

I shift my weight a little to stabilize myself, scowling. The entire weight of my body, however slight, is balanced on the equivalent of two hunting knifes with elaborately curled tips. Who _does_ this, let alone for fun?

I think again of my dad, of “skating” together in our boots. He would’ve loved to try out proper skates and would’ve given anything for me to have some, let alone this finely crafted pair. He’d joked about it the winter before he died; told me he wanted to start saving up to get me “real” skates, only how on earth could he buy them without word getting to the Peacekeepers? There’s nowhere to skate inside the fence; they’d have been on to us at once.

To me, Dad’s talk of ice skates was yet another fairy tale, like log houses and sleighs and enormous white bears. And now all of that is a part of my daily life, as ordinary as coal dust and poverty and roasted squirrel were yesterday.

I step gingerly up to the lake. If Dad were here, he’d be overjoyed. Ice skates; shimmering pure snow as far as the eye can see; a rich, hearty breakfast; this dream of a red coat, lined with fur. I was young when he died, but I know this is everything he wanted for me. Food, warmth – freedom, after a fashion – and happiness. For his sake, I bite back my scowl and step onto the ice, resolving to enjoy myself, no matter how many bones I break.

I catch my breath as the blades touch ice and automatically reach out for Dad’s hand. He’s not there, of course; no one is. Embarrassed, I keep that arm outstretched and extend the other as well, as a pretense of keeping my balance – and, surprisingly enough, it seems to help a little. I scoot one foot forward with a soft hiss, then the other. It’s a stilted, wind-up toy sort of movement – my joints are locked, save at the hips – but it’s _working_. I scoot ahead a few more careful steps before my right foot slips wildly ahead and I sprawl onto the ice in a graceless heap.

I curse Dad, ice, winter in general, and Peeta Mellark. I wonder if Peeta might’ve bought the skates purely for his own amusement: to watch Katniss Everdeen fall down, over and over again. Both the kitchen and the living room face the lake, after all: he could sit beside his stone fireplace with his coffee, warm and cozy, and laugh himself hysterical. I clamber to my feet again and glower back at the house just in case, letting him know that I don’t find this funny at all.

But I _do_. The third time I fall, I roll onto my back on the ice, laughing hard. I’m exactly like a goat kid trying out its legs for the first time. And thankfully, Dad taught me how to fall without hurting myself – overmuch, at least – to relax into a fall, not to tense up. I might still bruise a little, but I won’t have the full body aches that come from hitting the ground with rigid muscles – and thanks to Peeta’s thick clothing, I’m well cushioned. I’ll have a bruise or two on my knees, probably, but little else.

With a sigh, I let my head sink back into the fur-lined hood and gaze up at the sky. It’s a pale wintry blue today, bright and clear. A chickadee gives its buzzing call from nearby; I peer over to see it perched on the back of the bench and smile, whistling back to it. A bruise on my knee is little enough to pay for this moment.

I climb back up again and hear Dad’s voice in my head, a snatch of memory. Not chiding, but merry: _Bend your knees, catkin. You’re waddling like a duck._

I try it and am immediately surprised by the increase in stability and the ease of moving forward. I can slide my feet fluidly forward, one after the other, instead of stiffly scooting from the hip and having to consciously, clumsily shift my weight on each step. I probably still _look_ ridiculous, but I _feel_ much more graceful. It’s a bit like dancing, I realize. No one’s good at it to begin with, but you find ways to have fun at it until you get better.

Steadier now, I try skating in one big, lopsided circle. Sustaining the bent knees pulls on my thighs, but in a good way. They work a little harder like this; over time, skating would make them grow stronger.

I wonder if Peeta skates – living, as he does, a stone’s throw from the lake – and just as quickly answer myself: _of course not!_ Skating requires strong, agile knees and ankles. Peeta was able to keep his knee, but everything below it is prosthesis now. They’ve never shown it close up on television, and I wonder what the ankle is like. If it’s rigid, he could balance on it and propel himself with his other leg. If it’s flexible, like a real joint, he’d have a better range of motion, but less stability. Maybe skating would be good for him.

I blush at the presumption. Who am I, to make those kinds of judgments? After all, Peeta’s done well for himself in his recovery. He’s gained back the weight he lost in the arena, and it’s clearly the firm contour of muscle, not the fleshy result of a rich man’s indulgences. For some reason, that makes me blush even harder.

By my third loop of the circle, I’m moving faster and it’s starting to feel _good_. The soft whooshes of the blades against the ice, the crisp air kissing across my cheekbones as I pick up speed. I’m exerting myself purely for pleasure – not for survival, as the Capitol’s tried to reduce us to. My stomach aches from a generous meal, not from hunger; my thighs from skating, not from running and climbing in pursuit of my next meal. Peeta’s done more than save my life, and Mom’s and Prim’s; he’s defied the Capitol in the gentlest, most generous way possible. The thought makes me smile. Dad would’ve liked that too.

I skate loops until I lose count, then switch to long straight lines, running the length of Peeta’s house. On my first pass I notice a wooden outbuilding just off the north end of the house, set back a little into the woods. The stable, I imagine, though a building that size – it looks to have a second floor, even – could house a Seam family of at least six.

The sun climbs higher, and I realize it must be close to noon already. I woke much later than usual today; Peeta will probably want his lunch soon. I should go back inside, tidy myself up, ask what he wants to eat.

I skate over to the bench, sit once more, and reluctantly loosen the straps. I’m genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I wonder if I asked – if I was up very early and got my work done well and quickly – if Peeta would let me go skating again.

I leave the bench and promptly tumble face-first into a snowdrift. My feet want to slide, not step; for a moment they don’t quite remember how, and I laugh like a child at how ridiculous I must look.

A deep rumbling sound startles me – an echo of my laughter, but altered somehow; throatier – and I look up, expecting Peeta, to see a stranger: a bearded man in a heavy parka, standing a few feet away in the direction of the outbuilding. He points at me, then at the house. I realize he must be the other Avox and scramble through the drifts over to him, the skates dangling from my hand. “What was that?” I ask.

I understand what Peeta meant about both of the Avoxes being “distinctive” in appearance. The man isn’t as beautiful as Lavinia – I doubt _anyone_ is, anywhere – but he’s still quite striking. Tall – at least a head taller than Peeta – and burly; he’s built a bit like Peeta’s father. His eyes are blue and ordinary enough, as is the sandy hair curling out from beneath his stocking cap, but the thick beard covering the lower half of his face is _red_. A bright russety shade; more Darius-red than Lavinia-red, but still: not blond, not brown, not black. Not a color I’ve ever seen growing out of someone’s face before.

More remarkable than this, at least to me, is that he smells like my dad. That sharp, fresh scent of woods and wind and snow; the smell of a man who spends a great deal of time outdoors. For weeks after Dad died, I quietly cried myself to sleep with my face buried in his hunting jacket because it smelled like him. Before we became quite so desperately poor and _had_ to make use of every last little scrap, that’s why I wore his sweaters too.

This man smells of other things too: woodsmoke and hay and the warm musty scent of the pony, whereas Dad smelled of coal – coal fires; coal dust; the close, almost intangible odor of a hundred men sweating out their fears and breathing in each other’s sorrows in a lightless mine shaft. But the association is too strong. Already I like this strange red-bearded man – _trust_ him, even – and I don’t even know his name.

He touches his mouth lightly with a leather-gloved hand – I guess that’s shorthand for _I’m an Avox_ or maybe _I can’t speak_ ; I nod in reply – and he gestures more deliberately this time. At me, then at the house.

I follow the direction of his hand to see Peeta standing on the porch, coatless, his sleeves still pushed to his elbows, watching us and smiling. My lips curl up in an answering smile of their own volition, and I give a little wave, which he returns.

When I turn back, the Avox is holding a wood-framed slate, about the size of a notebook, and writing on it with a sharpened piece of chalk. He turns it around for me to read.

_You happy makes him happy._

Something strange stirs in my chest. I look up at the Avox questioningly; he nods, confirming what he’s written, and I glance back at Peeta again. Still smiling at me – at _us_ , I correct myself – he looks content, even at this distance. As though he’d be perfectly happy to stand on his porch for the rest of the day and watch his servants cavort in the snow. I wonder how long he’s been out here already. If he saw me fall and curse and laugh – and slowly begin to master the skates. I’m surprised by how badly I want him to have seen _that_ , and tell myself I just want to justify his faith in me. He may be wealthy, but the skates can’t have been cheap. I’d hate to be a poor return on his investment.

It’s different from when I thought he was sitting inside, watching me for his own entertainment. Something about him coming out here, the quiet happiness in what he’s looking at – even if it’s simply the beauty of this winter morning – takes my breath away.

The Avox gives another rumbling chuckle, and I turn back to him. He’s rubbed out the message on his slate; it now features an arrow pointing up toward his face and the name _Pollux_.

“Nice to meet you, Pollux,” I tell him. “I’m Katniss.”

He grins. _I know_ , he writes, underneath his name. Like Lavinia, he seems aware of my purpose for being here – far more so than I am – and slightly amused by it. It rankles a little – I hate the idea of anyone laughing at me, for whatever reason – but there’s something gentle in their humor. As though it’s the _situation_ that’s funny, not me. I wonder what Peeta told them before I came.

Pollux wipes the slate clean again with the heel of his hand and writes another message. _Want to see the stable?_

Of course. He’s probably supposed to train me; show me my outdoor duties. No wonder he came along when he did: I’m finished with my recreation, now it’s time for chores. “Sure,” I tell him. “But shouldn’t I change first?” Peeta’s coat is wonderfully warm, but it’s too costly, too precious, too _beautiful_. A few days of mucking out stables and chopping wood would ruin it. No wonder he’d apologized for it not being “practical.”

“I can get my hunting jacket,” I tell Pollux. _And my boots,_ I add mentally, thinking of pony dung staining the fawn-colored suede of my pretty new boots. “It’ll only take a minute.”

He frowns quizzically and scribbles another message: _Just to look._ He points at the stable, then back at the slate.

 _Just to look_ at the stable…? Maybe he simply means to show me around today, so I can start work tomorrow. Or maybe I’m meant to work in the house with Lavinia, but I still need to know about the stable and outdoor things.

Pollux holds out the slate again. This time it reads _Won’t get dirty_. He makes an all-encompassing gesture at my fine clothes, giving me a small smile.

“Okay,” I concede, and follow him to the outbuilding.

The stable is about as wide as my family’s house and half again as tall, with a concrete floor, electric lights, and a small wood-burning stove that, if the temperature in here is any indication, is very effective at keeping the place warm. Straight ahead of us is the sleigh, polished to gleaming, and beyond that is something large – presumably Peeta’s cart – covered with a tarp for the winter. Opposite the sleigh are three stalls; the rear two stand open and empty, and at a cheery whistle from Pollux, Rye’s long white face appears over the gate of the first.

Pollux ruffles the pony’s pale mane with one hand and waves me over with the other – clearly, encouraging me to come and say hello – but I hang back a little, uncertain. Rye is a grazer, a gentle beast of burden. I’m a meat-eater. A hunter. _Danger_. While I can never again think of this docile creature as a potential meal, still I wonder if he scents that primal hunger. If he can smell blood on me.

To my surprise, as I approach, Rye stretches out his neck, lipping at the right hip pocket of my coat. I’m reminded of his playful persistence last night, begging Peeta for treats, and shake my head with a chuckle. “I don’t have anything,” I tell him, reaching demonstratively into my fur-lined pocket, only to bring out a napkin wrapped around a small wedge of apple and a piece of carrot.

Peeta. Again, always, Peeta. He would have guessed I’d end up in the stable this morning and accordingly sent treats for Rye. I can’t believe I didn’t feel them in my pocket with all the falls I took this morning.

Rye reaches hopefully for the food, his neck stretched almost flat with eagerness, but I dip back a step and, no longer able to resist, take a bite of the carrot myself. I haven’t had one in over two months, and that had been a shriveled thing from the grocer’s trash bin, chopped into weak rabbit broth to stretch further. This is fresh, firm and crisp and sweet.

The pony tosses his head impatiently; laughing, I step forward again, holding out my palm the way Prim showed me, and let him take the apple and what remains of the carrot. When he’s finished, I dare a hand to his cheek, spreading my fingers to cup the broad bone. I rarely touch living animals, much less with affection, and never any quite so big. I can feel the heat of his body, even through the leather and fur of my glove, and I inch my thumb a little higher to stroke the hollow beneath his large, luminous eye.

I’m poised to dash back or withdraw my hand if need be – even a grazer’s teeth can do serious damage – but Rye merely nuzzles against my hand, whuffling softly. Pollux gives a throaty chuckle, and I look over to see him holding up the slate with one word written on it.

_Friend._

As with Madge, the word is unexpected and brings with it a bubble of giddiness – warmth, even. I peer up at Rye, considering. I suppose it isn’t the strangest thing in the world, a horse and a hunter becoming friends. I comb through his pale forelock with my gloved fingers and feel my lips curl into a smile. If I’m going to be out here for the rest of my life, I suppose a few extra friends can’t hurt.

Pollux walks me around the stable, indicating the corner designated for Rye’s hay and grain stores, the two empty stalls – my mind envisions chicken roosts in one, maybe a goat in the other – and the narrow stair leading to the second floor. _Loft_ , he writes before waving me up. At the top of the stairs is a small living space, rustic but sufficient, with a small bed, table and chairs, and a cookstove. Like the stable below, it has electric lights.

“Yours?” I ask. Pollux nods.

If the stable below was mild in temperature, this room is downright cozy. Clearly intended for practicality rather than elegance; the windows to each end are hung with simple cotton drapes, and a large woven rug covers most of the floor. It’s the sort of room that would have done very well for me. The sort of room I expected when I arrived here.

I follow Pollux downstairs and he shows me the workshop at the back of the stable. There’s a workbench, battered from years of use long before Peeta came, empty but for a can of nails and a few pairs of rough work gloves. Hanging from the wall alongside the bench are a few basic tools: a hammer, handsaw, ax, and pruning shears, polished and sharpened and ready for use. Below those are propped a rake, two shovels, and small hand tools.

_There’s a garden._

I’m not aware that I spoke the thought aloud till Pollux holds up the slate again, a lengthy message on it this time: _There’s a lot more, but you’ll have to wait till spring to see it._

He’s very nearly grinning, and I can’t resist returning the expression. There’s no place to garden – garden _properly_ – in the Seam. Mom grows herbs in broken old pots tucked into the warmest corners of our house, and Gale and I have made small efforts to cultivate some of our wild harvests – putting nets over the best patches of wild strawberries to keep away birds and deliberately reseeding foraged herbs near the edge of the woods whenever we can. A richer, more accessible harvest helps us all.

Pollux leads me out of the stable through the back door, and I find myself on the woods-facing side of the house. There’s a chopping block to one side of the door, and the aromatic pile of neatly stacked firewood nearly covers the entire back wall of the stable. Peeta won’t need me to cut more for a while, I surmise.

Between the house and the trees is an expanse of softly drifted ground, as long as the house itself and twenty or so feet wide, with lumps here and there suggesting bushes beneath the snow, and a lone skeletal tree – a fruit tree, most likely – standing at the center. This must be the garden. At the south end of it stands a little trellis, wound about with winter-browned vines, with a stone bench below. A pretty spot in spring, I imagine.

To my surprise, there are just as many windows on this side of the house as on the front. I count two for the bathroom – one over the round stone tub, the other built into the cave shower – two for my bedroom, and two for the room adjacent to mine that I haven’t seen yet. Above those, tucked beneath the gabled roof, are several small windows, and below – at the main level – are six more windows, curtained and mysterious, with rooms behind them that I can only guess at. About halfway along is a set of wide stone steps, leading up to the back door.

Pollux walks me back the way we came, and I ask if there’s anything I need to do before going back in the house. Rye appears to be comfortable and well fed, the stable is perfectly tidy, and there’s more than a week’s worth of firewood, cut and stacked behind the stable. Someone’s even shoveled paths through the snow. In addition to the one I took down to the lake, there’s a narrow swath circling the house and another between the house and the stable.

Pollux shakes his head with a smile, and I turn to walk back to the house, but I’ve barely taken ten steps when something hits me in the back with a soft wet thud. It doesn’t hurt in the least – my coat’s too well-insulated for that – and I turn back, suspicious, to see Pollux lingering in the stable doorway, whistling nonchalantly.

I may not be good at reading people, but I know a challenge when I see one.

I quickly scoop and pack a handful of snow and let it fly, smacking him in the chest. Far from disconcerted, Pollux delightedly returns fire. He’s stronger than me but slower and far less accurate; my years of hunting – of surviving on what I can hit with arrows and stones – have instilled in me swift reflexes and a keen degree of marksmanship, even in a snowball fight.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I threw a snowball. The snow in Twelve is filthy with coal dust, and starving as its citizens are, there’s little energy for any of us to waste on recreation. It feels so good, forming one perfect white snowball after another and pelting them at Peeta’s jovial manservant – luxurious, almost, like the skating.

I triumph, of course, though Pollux manages to get in a few decent hits. He finally disappears into the stable, laughing throatily, gloved hands up in a gesture of surrender. I crouch and wait, grinning, for another sneak attack, but he doesn’t reemerge.

Resigned to the end of our game, I turn back to the house, but I’m so flushed from the exertion that I decide instead to flop onto my back in the snow. It’s so gloriously warm inside my fur-lined coat and fleecy boots; I’m like a rabbit in its burrow, peeping out of my cozy bundling at the winter day.

I swish my arms and legs through the snow surrounding me and find myself making a snow angel. Dad taught me this when I was a tiny child – before Prim was born, I think – _but only in the woods, catkin_. Then as now, the district snow was almost tarry with coal dust; to lie in it was as good as ruining your clothes, and even then, we had few to spare.

I sit up, remembering another childhood occasion, when I held a bowl of fresh snow in mittened hands while Dad drizzled a hot amber liquid over it – maple syrup, boiled over the fire in the little shack by the lake. _Maple taffy,_ he called it, though I always thought of it as “sugar snow.” We brought home and sold all the rest of the syrup he harvested; it made me sad not to be able to make the treat at home and share it with Prim, but only the snow at the lake was clean enough to eat, Dad said.

The snow around me is pure white and begging to be tasted. I scoop a little in my gloved hand – it almost looks like sugar, heaped on my palm – and bring it to my mouth. It’s clean and fresh and very cold – so cold it makes my teeth ache. I’ve eaten snow for hydration before, but it never tasted quite like this. _Maybe Peeta really_ does _live in some kind of fairyland,_ I muse. _Even the snow is delicious._ I laugh at the thought and lip up another palmful of snow.

Dad and I also used to make snowmen in the woods. Looking at the heaps and heaps of snow around me – it was “sticky” enough for snowballs, so it’ll be perfect for a snowman – I’m overcome by the desire to make a snowman _now_. I’m already unforgivably late back to the house; surely Peeta won’t be angrier for a delay of a few minutes.

I climb carefully to my feet, so as not to ruin my snow angel, and form a compact ball of snow with my gloved hands. I roll it around the drifts until it’s too big to move – almost waist high on me – then make another, half the size, to heft on top of it, and finally a third, half the size of the second, to place atop that. One perfect snowman, nearly as tall as I am, and not in the least dingy or gray with coal dust. Gleeful, I hop through the drifts like a hare and dig at the lakeshore with the toe of my boot until I find a few pebbles to create my snowman’s face. This close to the woods, fallen branches are plentiful; I find two of a similar size for my snowman’s arms and break away twigs to form his hands.

“He looks cold.”

I start at the sound of Peeta’s voice and look up, blushing and mortified. It’s been at least half an hour since I saw him on the porch; in the meantime, I’ve been having a snowball fight, making a snowman – playing like a child. I have no words to explain myself, let alone to the grand young man standing beside me. He’s dressed in his bearskin, the winter sun glinting gold off his blond curls.

“Here,” he says, smiling, and unwinds his own scarf – a thick length of soft red wool – to wrap around the snowman’s “neck.” “That’s better.”

My jaw slacks a little. It’s the very thing my father would’ve done – _had_ done, even when the scarf around his neck was the only one he owned, and I’m reminded again of what an incredible father Peeta will be. Such a gentle, generous boy, with his big, warm hands and superb cooking and these little moments of playfulness. Scarves, ice skates, and peppermints…He’ll pamper his wife with every comfort and tumble on the living room’s mossy carpet with their children. Blond children, of course; chubby and fair-skinned and curly-haired. He’ll show them how to feed Rye and will sneak apples and carrots into their pockets; maybe he’ll even lift them up to sit on the pony’s broad back. He’ll teach them to paint and knead dough and make snowmen.

Something aches, low in my belly, at the thought of it, and I wonder, not for the first time, what happened to the girl he loved. The Capitol crew – the bizarre, colorful trio who came to film friends and family interviews when Peeta survived into the final eight – unearthed nothing more than the confirmation that there _was_ , indeed, an object of his unrequited affections. Delly Cartwright turned crimson when asked and only managed to nod and shake her head in response to the flood of questions: _yes_ , there was a girl in Twelve that Peeta was in love with; _yes_ , he had known her for a long time; _no_ , Delly didn’t think the girl knew he liked her. Marko gave a sad chuckle when asked about the girl but didn’t elaborate; the baker smiled grimly – the Games were particularly rough on him – and said, no doubt, we’d all find out when Peeta came home.

Only we didn’t. Peeta won the Games and returned to Twelve, and once they finished parading him around for the cameras, he disappeared out to his Victor’s Residence, only emerging for the Victory Tour and Harvest Festival and the occasional trip to town to collect supplies or a special delivery from the train station. He was as friendly as always and took time for anyone who wanted to speak to him, but he didn’t openly seek out any girl or her attentions.

There are a few theories making the rounds in the district, the first – and most popular – being that he simply outgrew the girl after the Games. The boys at school joke coarsely about what Peeta might’ve seen and done in the Capitol; I blush and ignore them but am forced to admit, at the very least, he’ll have encountered substantial beauty. Lavinia is a testament to that. She’s prettier than any woman in Twelve, hands down, and she’s his _servant_.

The second theory, and the saddest, is that Peeta _did_ ask, quietly, and the girl turned him down. He might be a wealthy Victor, but he’s missing half of his right leg. I don’t see how that matters two pins, especially in such a fit, good-looking young man, but apparently some girls find the idea off-putting, and a few crude – and, in my opinion, cruel – jokes have been made in regard to his missing leg affecting his “performance” in the bedroom. I can’t imagine that being a significant reason for a girl to turn him down, but if it was, I’m happy. Peeta deserves better than a wife repulsed by his body.

The third theory – and the one I put the most stock in, particularly after seeing this place – is that he wanted to make everything perfect for his girl before he proposed. He came back to the district with a cane; I caught a glimpse of him leaning heavily on it once – the powerful young man who killed a bear three times his size, reduced to a lean, hobbling cripple – and it almost broke my heart. He had to learn to walk without the cane, to move differently, before he could even think of pursuing a girl.

And, of course, he had to prepare his new home for her; outfit it with luxury and every comfort, as he most assuredly has. _Feathering his nest, that one,_ Greasy Sae told me with a sly wink, one Saturday in September, while the girls around her whispered about the crate of dishes Peeta had collected from the train station that morning. _It’ll be lady’s underthings next,_ she said. _Mark my words._

I closed my ears to the gossip after that.

I wonder now if I’m meant to be the final piece of his plan. A maid for Peeta’s bride-to-be. Surely, he has everything else in place.

“I’ve made you something,” he says.

“I’m sorry!” I blurt in reply. “I-I lost track of time.”

“You’re on your own time now, Katniss,” he says gently. “And you looked like you were having fun.”

My blush returns and deepens. I wonder how much he saw.

“I saw you eating the snow,” he says with a laugh, justifying my blush. “I had to taste it too, when I first got out here. It’s so clean, almost sweet – which gives me an idea, actually.” He grins. “Something Dad told me they used to do, back in the day, when you could still find clean snow in town. I think I’ll save it for tomorrow, though,” he says, his bright eyes glinting with mischief. “I have other ideas for tonight.

“Anyway, I just came out to say I’ve made you something to eat,” he explains, “whenever you’re ready, I mean. It’s just cooling – and it’ll keep – so stay out as long as you like.”

I can smell it on him: butter – salty, creamy butter – and flour and sugar; something baked and rich. I didn’t realize I was hungry again, but that faint whiff of _bakery_ on him makes me abruptly ravenous. “I’m ready now,” I tell him, and it’s not a lie. I’ve wasted half the day in leisurely dining and playing in the snow; it’s time and past for me to learn my chores. “I’ll come in with you.”

He takes me back to the living room where two mugs; a handsome teapot, enameled with a pine branch and pinecones; and a plate heaped with golden rectangular cookies wait on the low table in front of the sofa. Like last night, my slippers – well, Lavinia’s slippers – are warming on the hearthstone.

Peeta removes his bearskin then helps me out of my outerwear, settles me on the sofa, and eases off my boots. My fingers are icicles after so much time in the snow, and I wonder if he’s going to massage the blood back into them, like he did last night. I’m astonished by how much I want him to. I’m astonished by how disappointed I am when he doesn’t.

He touches my hands, of course; squeezing them a little, chafing them briskly between his palms as he crouches in front of me. I curl my fingers in the cradle of his hands, trying to capture his heat in my fists, but it’s not the same at all. I want his lingering touch again, his warm breath on my skin, so fiercely that, before I know what I’m doing, one stockinged foot brushes impatiently against his thigh.

Peeta gasps raggedly and looks up at me. I avoid his eyes, my face and chest – quite possibly my entire body – burning with blushes. “Katniss, a-are you-?” he rasps, only to break off mid-sentence. When I don’t answer, he tilts his head to catch my eyes. “Do you…um…” He’s blushing now, furiously, all the way to the roots of his hair. “Do you want me to rub your feet again?” he asks.

I stare at the fireplace, contemplating my reply. If I say yes, it’s like admitting a weakness – yet _another_ one – but clearly, Peeta already _knows_. In less than a day he’s proven how very _well_ he knows – or, at least, understands – me, and we’re both so painfully embarrassed right now that a refusal – proceeding as though nothing had happened – would be excruciating.

“Yes,” I whisper to the flames.

Peeta eases his fingertips inside the cuff of my right sock and carefully tugs it down, peeling the thick, knobby wool off my foot. I melt back into the sofa with a sigh, my blush fading – but not the heat that accompanied it – as I press my bare foot into his warm hand. My eyes drift closed, but I feel him smile as he folds both hands around my foot and massages it thoroughly, ankle to toes, paying special attention to the arch – the spot that made me moan last night. I bite back any such exclamations this time, though; I’m sure Peeta finds me ridiculous enough without the sounds.

When he’s finished with that foot, he rests it on his thigh and slips the sock off my other foot to begin its massage. I wonder how it would feel to have his hands just a little higher, those strong warm fingers kneading my calf muscles –

“How was skating?” Peeta murmurs. His voice is low and a little shaky.

“Good – oh!” I exclaim, sitting up as I recall my foolishness. “I left the skates in the stable.”

“Pollux will bring them back,” he assures me, his thumb tracing the contour of my arch in slow, firm strokes. I push back against the gentle pressure of his touch, pinching my lips together to hold back a groan; it feels _that_ good. “After all, he owes you for trouncing him in that snowball fight,” he teases.

“You saw that?” I ask, more than a little embarrassed. I behaved like a child for most of the morning, but engaging in a snowball fight with another servant – when both of us clearly had other things to do – must merit a reprimand, even from Peeta.

“Mmm,” he sighs. “You were magnificent.” He dips his head, lifting my foot a little, and presses his lips to the arch.

I nearly fly off the sofa – and probably would, were it not for his big hands wrapped around my foot, gently anchoring me to the seat. To _him_. His lips are warm and soft and slightly parted; brief as their touch is, they leave a whisper of moisture on my skin.

Peeta Mellark just kissed my foot. And not the top of it, either: the arch, the part I walk on. “What was that for?” I gasp.

“I told you,” he says, smiling, though his cheeks are a fiery shade of red once more. “You’re magnificent.”

He quickly bends and kisses the arch of my other foot, as though afraid I’ll stop him, then he straightens and reaches for the slippers on the hearthstone. But I’m not ready for them yet. My bare feet are humming with sensation, with the feel of Peeta’s hands and lips; to cover them now would be constrictive, almost painful.

“I’m all right for the moment,” I tell him, stilling his hand on the slippers. My right foot is still resting on his thigh, savoring the rough texture of his trousers and the heat of his body beneath. I’m astonished by how badly I want to rub my foot against him, just a little, to feel the friction of the material against my sensitized skin. “Anyway, Lavinia probably wants her slippers back,” I add hurriedly, avoiding his eyes.

“Katniss.”

I look up reluctantly; he’s smiling, but the color in his cheeks is still high. “They’re not Lavinia’s,” he says lightly.

I wonder how I’ve managed to be so dense. I don’t understand Peeta’s generosity, not at all, but a boy who had a coat custom-made for me in the Capitol, with his own white bear’s fur and embroidered katniss flowers, would hardly loan me his housekeeper’s slippers. I don’t know when he bought them or why, but they’re exactly like the other things he’s given me. The clothes, my hat and scarf; my bedroom, even: all soft, warm, and woodsy.

“Thank you,” I tell him. It’s inadequate and about half a day too late, but I’m overcome with the need to say _something_.

“You must be hungry,” he says. He gently lowers my foot to the floor, then shifts up from his crouch to sit on the edge of the low table. “I’ve made you my granddad’s famous shortbread.” He hands me the plate with a grin. “And tea; have all you like.”

I know about Mellark’s shortbread – Merchant kids sometimes buy it on the way to school and devour it, piping hot, from paper wraps that positively radiate butter – but I’ve never been able to afford it. I’ve never even bought a piece for Prim; it was that big of a luxury.

I bite into one of the warm golden cookies and groan; it’s dense and rich and crumbles on my tongue. I’m a relative stranger to butter, but it seems to me that if you added just enough flour to give it substance in the oven, that’s what this would be. A cookie _made_ of butter. My lips and fingers are deliciously oily just from touching it.

“Oh, this is good,” I sigh, reaching for a second piece. I narrowly manage not to shove it into my mouth.

“Thank you,” Peeta says, almost shyly, as he fills my mug with tea. “It’s so simple – just butter, flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt – that I sort of hate taking credit for it.”

He blows lightly on the mug before offering me the handle; I take a cautious sip and sigh again. It’s a superb tea – malty but not bitter, with a startling, bright note of strawberry – perfectly paired with the shortbread.

“Do you want milk or sugar?” he offers, filling the second mug for himself. “This kind is really good as it is, but – ”

“It’s perfect,” I assure him. I’ve used the word a lot today, more than I ever have in my life before, and yet it’s not an exaggeration. Everything I’ve seen – everything Peeta’s given me – has been absolutely _perfect_. Faultless. Impossible to make better. “Aren’t you going to have some too?” I ask, holding out the plate.

“If you insist,” he replies, smiling. He takes a piece of shortbread and eats it thoughtfully while I bolt down my third and fourth pieces, interspersed with plenty of hot tea. I don’t know how I can still be hungry after that huge breakfast, but with the shortbread in front of me, it’s like I haven’t eaten in days.

“This isn’t very substantial,” Peeta says suddenly. “I’m sorry.”

I realize he’s not speaking for himself; he’s been watching me inhale the shortbread. I sheepishly force myself to chew the bite in my mouth five more times before swallowing it.

“Would you like something else?” he asks.

“No, thank you,” I assure him. “I’m fine.”

He’s clearly unconvinced. “A boiled egg?” he persists. “Some cheese?”

Both of those sound amazing right now, but Peeta’s not here to cook for me; to cater to my stomach’s whims. The shortbread and tea were more than enough. “N-No…” I say, but I can feel my resolve weakening.

“Bread?”

My resolve is gone altogether. I stare back at him with wide, hopeful eyes. _Dammit._

Peeta grins. “Bread it is,” he says. He disappears in the direction of the kitchen – I manage _not_ to eat the rest of the shortbread in the few minutes that he’s gone – and returns with a tray containing half of one of the loaves he made this morning and a dish of butter, plus thick slices of cheese, apple, and cold sausage. I want to snap at him, but I really _am_ hungry; I can’t hide my eagerness at the sight of so much food.

He sits on the edge of the low table again and, as he did this morning, serves me a feast. As he did last night with the apple, he silently cuts slices of the bread – his own good bread; soft, golden-crusted Mellark Bakery bread – slathers them with butter, and hands them to me, topped with a piece of sweet, savory sausage or the pleasantly sharp yellow cheese. Sometimes he pairs the cheese with a piece of tart pink apple. He doesn’t rush but patiently waits for me to finish, or nearly finish, whatever he gave me before preparing the next serving. I’m reminded again of how uncannily he seems to know me: whatever combination he hands me is, somehow, exactly what I’m craving in that bite.

“It’s heartbreaking, watching you eat,” he says softly.

I look up at him, frowning. I wonder if he could be mocking me – my manners or voracious appetite – but there’s a strange sort of pain in his eyes. “You have this look of wonder at even the most ordinary things,” he explains, “and, at the same time, disbelief.”

He brushes my cheek with a fingertip and I shiver. Not from fear or discomfort; my skin tingles where he touched it, so very gently. “I swear to you, Katniss,” he says, “For the rest of your life, you will always have enough to eat.”

The words are quiet but intense, like last night in the sleigh, when he promised to mentor me in the Games, if it came to that. When he promised he wouldn’t let me die. “More than enough,” he corrects himself, perhaps recalling how very little _enough_ might be to someone like me, then, “Too much.” A small smile teases up the corners of his mouth, and I know he’s recalling my words from this morning. “Too much of _everything_ for the rest of your life, Katniss,” he vows. “I promise.”

Something about this declaration steals my breath away. I suppose a cold and hungry worker is no good to him, but such overwhelming generosity – the rich food and fine clothes, when plain of both would have sufficed – is wholly unexpected; unnecessary, really, even if he _can_ afford it. And yet, a small, secret part of me takes comfort in his promise. Even if, as I suspect, Peeta’s exaggerating somewhat, I’ll have warm clothes and plenty of food for the rest of my life. My eyes burn a little at the thought, and I twist my lips to hold back a small sob. I agreed to this bargain to help Mom and Prim. It never occurred to me, despite what Peeta said that night about me being _well taken care of_ and having _the very best_ , that _I_ might get food and clothes and a warm home too.

When I’ve eaten all I can possibly stomach, Peeta cuts one final slice of bread and folds it in half, making himself a sandwich with the last of the sausage and cheese. After his careful, patient feeding of me, it’s an endearingly childish gesture, and I wonder if he’s been ignoring his own hunger all this time while ensuring I had plenty. He takes a few bites, washing them down with tea, then asks cheerfully, “Are you ready for your tour?"


	8. A Never-Ending Feast (Part Two)

_Then [the bear] said, “This house and all that is here belongs to you.”  
_ ~ _The Three Gold Nuts,_ retold by Mrs. Dicy Adams, collected by James Taylor Adams

We return to the kitchen and set our dishes on the table, then, with a quick grin back at me, Peeta opens a door in the wall to the left of the massive icebox. I expect a pantry – a small closet filled with dry goods – and then he flips the light switch.

It’s a separate room, at least one-fourth the size of the kitchen, _entirely filled with food_. Barrels, waist high and broad enough that I could fit inside them, line the walls; above them are three rows of shelves filled with canisters and jars and tins and bottles in an stunning array of sizes and colors. A few of the shelves hold shallow crates; I spy potatoes and squash and apples between the slats.

It’s like the grocer’s and the sweet-shop rolled into one. My jaw falls slack. A room filled with money or jewels couldn’t have impressed me more.

“This, of course, is the pantry,” Peeta tells me, his smile broadening.

Some of the barrels, he explains, hold flour – several different varieties, though I’m most impressed by the silky white kind that is the bakery’s stock in trade – and the others, dried beans and grains. My mouth waters at the sight of an entire barrel of thick oats, and my eyes sting with tears when Peeta gently holds my hand over yet another barrel and pours a stream of tiny red lentils over my palm.

The final two barrels hold sugar, brown and white, and on the shelf above them are large canisters of two additional sugars: coarse light brown crystals and fine white powder, as smooth as the bakery flour. Beside them are jugs of oil and vinegar, a few tins of molasses, and several jars of honey. Honey I know well, having harvested it myself a time or two, but there are half a dozen varieties here, ranging from pale gold to dark amber. Peeta opens the palest and offers it to me; the aroma is staggeringly floral, like the Meadow at high summer.

I bring the lid to my mouth before I realize what I’m doing and catch myself just short of licking the sticky patch of gold. I’m mortified, but Peeta only chuckles softly and nods encouragement. Emboldened, I sweep a fingertip across the lid, coating it with the fragrant honey, and pop it into my mouth. It tastes like summer, like the purple clover blossoms that I eat like candy, and I sigh with pleasure.

Adjacent to the honey shelf are tins of coffee and tea, a few of them beautifully enameled. I think of the delicious strawberry note in the tea Peeta served with the shortbread and wonder about the flavors of the rest. I wonder if he makes coffee like his father, adding nuts and spices to the beans before grinding them.

There are dozens of jars of fruit; some dried, some in syrup, still others condensed into jewel-bright jams and preserves. A single jam jar would be worth a small fortune in the Seam and would be rationed to last a family like mine at least six months. Most of these bear the simple brown-and-white label of products sold at the grocer’s, though a few sport a more colorful, elaborate label that must hearken from the Capitol, and others merely have a date and description handwritten on the lid. Could Peeta have made those himself? I can’t imagine having enough fruit, let alone the ridiculous amounts of sugar required. I pick up one – a pint jar of beautifully seedy raspberry jam, dated from September – and he smiles. “The house came with a decent garden,” he tells me. “A little overgrown, but well worth the trouble.”

Next are jars of nuts and seeds and creamy golden brown spreads, most of them Capitol-labeled, that Peeta identifies as nut butters. Beside these are many smaller jars of herbs and spices, like the three Peeta had out last night for the hot chocolate, and a line of tiny dark bottles that he identifies as extracts. We’ve never had the luxury of those in our cupboard, but I think Mom used to make them when she worked at the apothecary. Peeta uncaps the one marked _Vanilla_ and proffers it for a sniff that makes my eyes glaze over. This heady scent is common at the bakery; I’ve noticed it on my trading visits but was never able to pinpoint exactly what it was. I wonder how Peeta – how _any_ of his family – can bear working around such a cripplingly delicious smell, day in and day out.

There are larger bottles above these; tall, slender, and Capitol-labeled, filled with liquids in every imaginable shade of red and gold. “Wines and liqueurs,” Peeta explains, gesturing at a bottle the color of a Merchant girl’s blushes. “For cooking.”

I raise my brows. Few people can afford to get drunk in Twelve, but the most prominent of those is Haymitch Abernathy, our district’s only other living Victor and Peeta’s mentor from the Games. A crass, filthy man, whose winnings appear to have gone solely toward the purchase of veritable lakes of foul white liquor.

Peeta laughs. “I have no intention of turning into another Haymitch,” he assures me. “There are far better ways to spend a fortune and remain clear-headed enough to enjoy it.”

I smile, thinking of what he’s spent his money on already. Beautiful winter coats and boots for two Seam girls. A house filled with warmth and food and light. A pony and sleigh. Ice skates and peppermints. There’s no danger of this boy turning into another Haymitch.

Beside the extracts is something else I recognize from last night: the large ceramic canister of powdered chocolate. _Milk_ , it’s labeled, oddly enough, and it stands alongside two others, one marked _Dark_ and the other _White_. I imagine those must be more sugars – whoever heard of chocolate being white? – and then Peeta takes a large rectangular tin off the shelf beside the canisters and opens it, turning back layers of frosted paper to reveal large chunks of something smooth and cream-colored, almost yellow, with a heady fragrance that reminds me of the vanilla extract. “You have to try this,” he says eagerly, handing me a piece the size of my thumb.

I take a tentative bite and moan. It’s creamy – buttery, almost – and very sweet, melting in the heat of my mouth. It _feels_ like that bite of chocolate Prim and I shared two years ago, but it doesn’t taste like it. It tastes exactly like the vanilla extract smells, and my knees wobble a little at the unexpected bliss.

“Good?” Peeta teases, his cheeks slightly pink.

I nod in reply, wondering how he can live around such foods and not devour the entire container in a single sitting.

“White chocolate,” he tells me, carefully rewrapping the chunks and putting the tin away. I try not to look too regretful. “I have dark and milk chocolate too, of course, ground and block.” He gestures at the equally large tins alongside the one he just returned to the shelf, and I try to imagine _more chocolate_. Tins _full_ of chocolate.

Peeta chuckles, and I wonder if he knows, yet again, what I’m thinking. “I use the ground milk chocolate for drinking,” he explains, “and the rest mostly for baking, but you’re welcome to any of it, as much as you want. Anytime.”

I turn to him, gaping. Merchant kids probably have a chocolate or two every night after school, but for the likes of me, chocolate is as precious and rare as pearls. This is ridiculously generous, even for Peeta.

He takes my hands in his, and though he flushes a little, his face is solemn and somber. “Everything in this house belongs to you, Katniss,” he says softly, and it’s the vow-like tone from the sleigh and the fireside. “Anything you see is yours for the asking.”

I shiver a little under the gaze of those bright blue eyes, my small hands folded into his warm grasp. I don’t believe him, of course. I don’t think he’s lying; I just know he doesn’t mean it. Not literally. _My_ stove and fireplaces and pantry overflowing with food? Hardly. It’s just a phrase by way of welcome: _My house is your house_ , as some of the oldest Seam residents say. They don’t _mean_ it, of course; you don’t come to stay with someone and own their house and everything in it. Not in the Seam, and definitely not in a Victor’s Residence.

“Um…thank you,” I say. It’s inadequate, probably, but I can’t think how else to answer a promise that isn’t exactly a promise. “You’re too generous to me.”

He releases my hands and looks away for a moment, and I feel like I’ve disappointed him somehow. I suppose it’s time, considering how brusque and ungrateful I was to him yesterday, but why now? I said _thank you_ , words that stick in my throat even at the best of times. What more does he want?

He turns back, smiling once more, and I wonder if I might’ve imagined his disappointment. We move to the final shelf and he tugs forward one of the crates, this one filled almost to its brim with onions, as big as my two clenched fists. I pick one up, cupping it in both hands. It’s firm and heavy and beautifully pungent; my mouth waters at the smell. I want to tear off the thin golden skin and bite into it like an apple.

“Onions for supper, then?” Peeta wonders, and I look up to see him smiling gently, almost sadly, at me. What had he said in the living room? _You have this look of wonder at even the most ordinary things, and, at the same time, disbelief._ And in less than a day, he’s proven beyond a doubt that he knows what it looks like when I’m longing for something. The apples, the bread and cheese, and now, ridiculously enough, onions. It’s disconcerting and, at the same time, strangely comforting. I may not believe what he said about anything and everything in this house being mine, but I know he’ll keep me fed.

He takes the onion from my hand, pauses a moment in thought, then tugs forward other crates to retrieve two cloves of garlic, a handful of small red-skinned potatoes, and a sunny orange pumpkin, about three times the size of the squash I split with the Hawthornes yesterday. He juggles them in his strong arms, tucking the onion into the crook of his elbow, and reaches down a tin of molasses. “Would you mind grabbing the white pepper and rosemary?” he asks, gesturing at the spice shelf with his shoulder.

“ _White_ pepper?” I reply, with as much confusion as if he’d asked for a blue onion.

Peeta smiles gently. “It’s milder,” he explains. “They used it once in a cream soup in the Capitol, or I wouldn’t have known about it either.”

The spice jars are arranged alphabetically, and both rosemary and white pepper are easy to locate. I eye the pepper suspiciously: it’s finely powdered and a sort of pale, sandy brown – not white – in color; absolutely nothing like the coarsely ground black pepper sold by the grocer, nor the shriveled earthy peppercorns in the little grinder on the breakfast table. But Peeta obviously knows what he’s doing, so I shrug and follow him out of the pantry, spice jars in hand.

We deposit our foodstuffs on the table and Peeta turns to open one side of the enormous icebox. If the pantry had been breathtaking, this is almost incomprehensible.

There are long blocks of butter and a rainbow of cheeses wrapped in waxed paper, two dozen brown eggs in cartons, eight stout bottles of milk and five smaller bottles that must be cream. Beside the bottles is a glass pitcher of something cloudy and orange, and as I try to identify it, Peeta steps back to a cupboard to get a small glass and fills it with the contents of the pitcher, which of course he hands to me. “Orange juice,” he says. “It’s delicious.”

I’ve only had one orange in my entire life: a New Year’s treat from Dad, many years ago, and one tentative sip of the juice – it’s sweet and pulpy and tastes like sunshine – brings every last bit of that memory flooding back. I finish the rest in three greedy swallows; the juice is refreshingly acidic after all the rich food I’ve had today. “Delicious,” I echo, blushing a little at my manners – and blushing deeper still when Peeta pours me another half-glass.

“I made it this morning,” he tells me, smiling. “I always have a few oranges on hand, but I’ll keep more around now, since I know you like it.”

I can’t imagine _always having a few oranges on hand_ , let alone _more_ than a few, when just a moment ago, a single orange was a once-in-a-lifetime treat. I’d thank Peeta, but I’m blushing so hard that my face hurts, and I hide behind the glass as I finish the second serving in small sips.

On the bottom shelf of the icebox is a whole chicken on a platter, ready for cooking, and several paper parcels from the butcher’s, marked with Rooba’s illegible scrawl. A whole shelf full of fresh butcher meat. My mouth waters, even as I fill it with orange juice. I think of the sweet herb-rich sausages Peeta fried this morning and the cold savory sausage he fed me just minutes ago, along with the bread and cheese and apple. I can scarcely imagine what sorts of wonders lie within those mysterious butcher-shop parcels.

He closes that side of the icebox and I feel a little sad, as though I’d hoped to stand and simply stare at all that food for an hour or more, and then he opens the other side and I’m too stunned to leave room for any other emotion. The other side is a meat freezer, holding parcels upon parcels wrapped in butcher paper. These are more clearly labeled, and dated, in handwriting that must be Peeta’s. I note beef roasts and chicken and bacon and yet _more_ sausage – even a whole ham – but, unsurprisingly, no horse. I can’t imagine gentle Peeta ever eating horse meat, even before he owned Rye.

“It’s a little excessive, I know,” Peeta says, closing the freezer door, and his face is as flushed as mine must have been a moment ago. “But, well…we’re pretty remote out here, and we could get snowed in at any time, so I wanted to have plenty of food on hand. And…I didn’t know what you like,” he adds with a shy smile.

“Anything,” I tell him without hesitation. “Everything.”

He laughs. “We’ll try to narrow that down in the next week or so,” he says. “I don’t mind stocking lots of different foods, but I want them to be things that _you_ want; that you _enjoy_. If I make something you don’t like, or you want something I haven’t made, just say so, okay?”

I stare at him strangely, reminded again of how backward this is. Peeta is my host – my employer, really – but he’s talking like I’m mistress of the house and he’s my cook. “Um…if that’s what you want,” I answer. After all, maybe he meant that as an order. He hasn’t told me to do anything yet, except to pick up two spice bottles and play in the snow.

He leads me next into the adjacent dining room, about half the size of the kitchen but just as cozy, with its own fireplace, a handsome oak table with six chairs, and off to one side, a long dresser-like piece of furniture, matching the table and chairs, with shallow drawers at the top and wide cupboards below. Madge’s family has one in their formal dining room; she told me they use it for storing kitchen linens and serving meals sometimes. I think it’s called a sideboard. 

The dining room is on the southeast corner of the house, with walls the color of the sweet-shop’s toffee buttons and the same brown stone flooring as the kitchen. I bet it’s a wonderful place at lunchtime, especially in the summer. The windows are curtained at present with sheer brown drapes, but in summer the curtains would be tied back and the windows wide open, filling the room with a balmy breeze of cool water and sun-baked clover, green grass and dandelions and warm pine sap. I imagine sitting in one of those chairs on a summer day, knees pulled up to my chin, eating cold sausage and cheese with Peeta.

“It’s just me at mealtimes, or has been, up till now,” Peeta explains. “Pollux and Lavinia like to eat on their own. I usually just eat in the kitchen, but I’d love to give the dining room a try, now that you’re here. Maybe for supper?”

I picture this snug nest of a room by firelight and try to imagine what sort of supper Peeta would prepare and serve here, with a pumpkin, an onion, and molasses. “That sounds perfect,” I say.

From there we pass through the back entry of the house: a mudroom, with a low bench and little niches for our coats and boots and other outdoor gear. Dad’s worn hunting jacket hangs in the niche next to Peeta’s bearskin, as though it belongs there, and the sight of it makes something warm and strange tingle in my stomach.

My beautiful new coat hangs here too, the red wool and white fur vibrant even in shadow, and there are a few other coats I can’t identify – Pollux and Lavinia’s, no doubt. There are empty niches too; smaller ones, lower down, and I suppose they’re for Peeta’s children to use. I imagine tiny versions of my coat and Prim’s in those niches: fur-lined, of course, and brightly colored, paired with jaunty little mittens and stocking caps and small fleecy boots. I picture a child bundled in such clothes, red-cheeked and giggling, with blond curls peeping out from under his stocking cap, and his handsome father, wrapped in white fur, lifting him with a laugh to wind a scarf around a snowman’s neck. Once more I feel a peculiar low ache, almost a hollowness, in my belly. Not my stomach, but lower – where I would carry a child.

Confused, I try to shake away the feeling as I follow Peeta down the hallway that runs behind the living room. There’s a small bathroom just off the mudroom, oddly unembellished in comparison to the rest of the house. It holds a toilet and sink and one narrow window, and the walls are painted a soft pale green. Peeta explains that this is sort of a “utility” bathroom; any of us can use it, but it’s ideal for when he’s working in the kitchen or outside and doesn’t want to track a mess upstairs, and he’s accordingly left it rather plain. I don’t tell him it’s a palace compared to our crude little bathroom in the Seam.

The next room is larger but slightly cramped, with two massive square appliances, a small sink, an ironing board, and a row of cupboards on the wall above. We find Lavinia there, wearing a dress of dark green plaid today, with her stunning hair rolled up and pinned in a neat crescent along the back of her head. She smiles in greeting as she folds Madge’s sweater on top of what I vaguely recognize – from Madge’s house, of course – as a clothes dryer. We’d been on our way to her house for a study session once and been caught in the rain, and Madge had tossed my sweater into the strange, oven-like appliance for a few minutes, only to bring it out warm and dry, almost by magic. I chuckle a little at the memory.

“Lavinia takes care of the laundry,” Peeta tells me, giving her a cheerful nod, and I begin to wonder exactly what sort of chores they’ve saved for me. “She knows her way around this better than I do, even after years of washing bakery linens, but if you’re worried and want to wash some of your personal things yourself, she can show you where everything is and how to use it.”

I look at the small pile of garments on top of the dryer and realize that she washed my clothes – Madge’s sweater and shirt and leggings – from the journey yesterday. Is Lavinia so idle – and Peeta so wealthy – that they launder clothing after just one wearing? Or am I only meant to wear the clothes Peeta bought me now, and she washed Madge’s things so they can be returned?

We continue down to the door at the end of the hallway. Peeta hesitates before opening it and doesn’t go inside, and I hang back as well, peering curiously around him. It looks like an ordinary living room, maybe a little on the small side, with a sofa and television and a telephone on an end table. And then I feel it, creeping over my skin like an unexpected chill and raising the hairs on the back of my neck: the Capitol presence, the whisper of the Games, absent in every other room of this warm, wholesome house.

“This is the room I have to have,” Peeta whispers.

I understand now. The television and the phone. He has to have both, and he keeps them all but locked away in the darkest, coldest corner of his house. If the small bathroom was unembellished, the Capitol room, as I realize I’ll think of it now, is stark, lifeless, and abandoned. The sofa would not be out of place in a nicer Seam house. The walls are a dull shade of gray, and everything is slightly dusty.

“Lavinia doesn’t come in here at all,” he says quietly. “I promised her that from the beginning.”

Dread closes around my throat like an icy fist. “Peeta, tell me about Avoxes,” I whisper.

“Not here,” he whispers back.

He closes the door to the Capitol room and pulls it fast, then leads me back down the hallway. After a moment’s contemplation, he opens the back door and goes out to sit on the steps; I follow and sit as near to him as possible. I’ve gathered he doesn’t want to be overheard, and we’re both coatless; it’s no bad thing to try and share a little of our body heat.

“The Capitol calls them traitors,” he says, almost inaudibly, and I lean closer so as not to miss a single word. “Maybe they openly defied the wrong person. Maybe their parents didn’t put enough money on the Games. Maybe they didn’t watch the recaps. I don’t know exactly what happened with Pollux, but Lavinia and her boyfriend tried to run away from the Capitol. To get away from the shallowness and cruelty, to start a new life, someplace quiet and simple and safe. They were caught just outside of Twelve.”

I cease to breathe. “W-what happened?” I choke.

Peeta clears his throat. “Peacekeepers killed her boyfriend and brought her back to the Capitol to become an Avox.”

“Which is _what_ , exactly?” I ask, shivering violently from both the cold and the anticipated horror.

Peeta slips an arm around my shoulders and pulls me to his side. I feel the delicious warmth of his body, even through his sweater, and realize he’s trembling a little too. I wonder if he’s holding me for his own comfort as much as mine.

“They cut out her tongue,” he whispers, and his face is so close to mine that I feel his breath on my cheek. “Cut out her tongue and made her a slave in the place she hated so much that she’d rather have died than stay another day.”

I whimper and bring a hand to my mouth. I’m well aware of the horrors that the Capitol proudly inflicts in the Games every year, and the punishments that Peacekeepers are only too happy to administer in the districts, but _this_ …I have no words for this.

Peeta presses his cheek to mine, and it helps a little. “Pollux started in the sewers,” he says. “Lavinia was pretty, so they wanted her visible – but not conspicuous. So they had her waiting on Tributes straightaway. Pollux worked underground for almost five years while his brother raised the bribes to get him a position in the Training Center.” He pauses, and I feel his mouth twist in a scowl. “Can you imagine a life so awful that waiting on doomed kids would be a treat?” he asks.

I shake my head against his.

“He’d only been there for a year when I got Reaped,” he says, “and we hit it off right away. I asked him for pen and paper so we could communicate more easily, and we ended up passing notes like schoolboys. He’s funny,” he adds, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

“He is,” I agree, thinking of Pollux’s laughter and grins and the snowball fight he started, and try to imagine that merry, robust man, mutilated and working in foul darkness for _five years_. I wonder if his “crime” was really so heinous in the Capitol’s eyes, or if they’d simply ruled him not beautiful enough to wait on Tributes.

“I liked Lavinia too,” Peeta says. “She was so good and gentle with Larkspur, and…it was just so _wrong_. Whatever she did – it didn’t merit _that_.”

His breath is speeding up, growing shallow; he’s getting angry. I draw back a little to look into his eyes, willing him to stay calm and quiet. We may be as far away from the Capitol as you can get, but he’s already said things they could kill him for, Victor or no.

“When I asked if I could take them back to Twelve, people looked at me like I’d asked to take home the trash,” he says, his voice hard and furious. “‘You don’t want _them_ , Peeta; hire yourself some strapping locals when you get home.’ But I insisted; offered money I didn’t have yet, under the pretense of buying them as slaves. I hadn’t even asked Pollux and Lavinia if they were willing to come,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to get their hopes up if I couldn’t make it happen.”

“But you _did_ ,” I remind him soothingly. Something about angry Peeta – righteously angry Peeta, standing up to Capitol injustice and being mocked for it – makes my heart hurt.

“For a nominal fee,” he answers dryly. “Far less than what I initially offered. I think they were all laughing at me behind their hands: the stupid sentimental Victor who wanted to take home a couple of mute slaves.”

“And Pollux and Lavinia agreed?” I ask.

“In a heartbeat,” he says, and his mouth softens into a sad smile. “Pollux hugged me. Lavinia cried.”

Once again, Peeta’s sheer _goodness_ astonishes me. Taking a Capitol slave – a Capitol “traitor” – to an outlying district is surely on a level with what he did for me. Hiring a citizen of Reaping age and taking her out of the district, fighting to get her out of the Reaping or at least to reduce her tesserae… I want to tell him how amazing he is, how unbelievably good and kind and generous, but the words freeze in my throat, and before I can free them he’s helping me to my feet.

“Come on,” he says brightly, “You haven’t seen the upstairs yet.” He picks up the thread of our previous conversation, cheerful and enthusiastic once more, as though there had been no break in our tour. And I realize: that’s probably what he wants the Capitol transmitters – the inevitable “bugs” hidden throughout the house that, up till now, I’d forgotten about – to pick up. A short silence, as though we stepped outside for a few minutes, then a return to the tour.

We go upstairs, and I expect Peeta to show me the rooms opposite mine, but instead he opens a small door at the end of the hallway to reveal yet another flight of stairs. “Lavinia lives up here,” he explains, ducking his head a little and leading the way.

The attic is not unlike Pollux’s loft above the stable, albeit a shade warmer and more elegantly furnished. It’s essentially one long room, with a pretty bed in one corner, bookshelves and a small sofa in another, and a little kitchen in the next, complete with a sink and stove and cupboards, even a small table and chairs. The fourth corner is enclosed to contain a bathroom, far more like the one off the mudroom than the one attached to my bedroom. Simple and efficient, it has a toilet, sink, and shower, and white walls scattered with colorful wildflowers.

“Lavinia spends most of her time up here,” Peeta explains. “I always offer her and Pollux a portion at mealtime and a place at the table; sometimes they take the food, but they always go back to their own rooms to eat it.” He doesn’t say what we both have surmised: how difficult – uncomfortable, even embarrassing – it must be to eat without a tongue. “Pollux has a bathroom in the loft but no shower, so he comes up a couple times a week to use Lavinia’s. If it gets too cold above the stables, he’ll stay the night up here too.”

Though these would be luxurious accommodations for a Merchant girl, they pale in comparison to the bedroom and bathroom allotted for my use, and I can’t help wondering why Peeta is giving me so much more than his other servants when their living quarters would have more than sufficed for someone like me. I would easily and happily share Lavinia’s attic; I could sleep on the sofa or even share the bed. But I bite my tongue and follow him back down to the level where my room is.

The first door on the opposite side of the hallway holds a guest bedroom, done up in shades of honey and russet brown. It’s nice enough but feels unfinished, somehow, as though Peeta hasn’t quite assigned its purpose yet. I wonder if it’s meant to be the nursery for his children.

When we get to the next door Peeta pauses for a moment, and I worry that this room has something to do with the Capitol as well. It’s directly opposite my bedroom door, and the thought of the icy fingers of the Capitol, near enough to drift over my face at night, fills me with horror. But before I can find my voice, Peeta blushes and says, “This is where I spend most of my time,” and pushes the door open.

It’s…an art room. I’ve never seen one before; I didn’t even know such places existed, but it’s impossible not to piece together, based on the content of the room. The walls are dappled with green and brown and gold, like summer sunlight filtered through leaves, and the carpet is a lush, meadow-grass green. On one side of the room is a narrow table, with three feet of work surface cleared at its center and areas to either side designated for charcoal and parchment and brushes and paints. Squeeze-tubes, shallow pots, dark bottles with brightly colored drips at their necks; more kinds and colors of paint than I ever could’ve imagined. At the center of the room is a stool and an easel holding a blank canvas; clearly, just waiting for Peeta’s brush. There’s an armchair as well, currently occupied by a handful of charcoal sketches. The topmost is of a small figure in a hooded coat, skating on the lake… _me?_

The only pictures on display are charcoal sketches of katniss plants, rendered over and over again in painstaking detail and tacked up above the work table. Most focus on the tiny three-petaled flowers, but several are devoted to the broad arrowhead-shaped leaves, the slender spikes, even the tubers. Those aren’t pretty in the least – they look more like funny little brown onions than anything else – and while Peeta’s captured them in almost mouthwatering detail, he’s done nothing to beautify them. And yet, there’s something startlingly lovely about katniss tubers drawn by his hand.

Dad would have loved these sketches – been in awe of them, really, just as I am now. He loved katniss; it was his favorite plant. The tubers kept him and his mother alive the summer that his father’s heart gave out in the mines. Grandma Everdeen was young and strong; she hunted beside her husband every Sunday and gave birth to Dad, all on her own, after bringing down a deer on what had been intended as a quiet foraging trip into the woods. But she was pregnant with her second child when my grandfather died, and the shock of losing her husband made the baby come early. It was a tricky birthing; the baby – Dad’s sister – died, and my grandmother was ill for a long time afterward.

Dad was eight at the time; years too young to take tesserae, too small to draw even his mother’s lightweight bow, and still enough of a child to be horrified by butchering game, despite his deft hand for snares. But he was a skilled forager and, more importantly, knew which wild foods would be most sustaining, most worth the effort of gathering. He stuffed the pockets of his overalls with muddy katniss tubers and knotted together a few spikes to make a crown of the little white blossoms to cheer up his mother. They lived for two weeks on little more than that: katniss tubers, a couple of lake perch, fiddleheads, a precious handful of wild strawberries – and the hope woven into a katniss-flower crown.

You’d expect it to be an awful memory: losing half your family at once; having to take care of your hurt and grieving mother, and no one to look after you, but Dad was resilient, even as a child. He loved the woods and adored his mother, and he looked back on that time as an adventure. He recounted it to Prim and I like one of his old tales: a little boy foraging for treasures in a dangerous and fascinating wildwood, rooting out plump tubers worth more than gold.

Then and there, he said, he resolved to have a little girl one day and name her Katniss. _It’s everything I wanted my daughter to be, catkin,_ he told me once, with a grin. _Nourishing – life-saving, really – and at home in the water, with an inclination toward arrows and a startling little flash of beauty._ When he grew up and married Mom, however, she was less than enthused by his choice. She was, after all, a Merchant girl, an apothecary’s daughter, and she insisted on a prettier name for their child. A flower; an herb, even; _anything_ but that strange water weed with the scrawny stems and tiny flowers and muddy, potato-like roots.

But when Mom finally got pregnant, one very wet autumn, she craved nothing so much as katniss tubers. Boiled, roasted, made into stews; her favorite was browned in a pan and tossed with salt and oil and wild garlic. She sent Dad out to the lake every couple of days for more and flew into a panic when the first frost struck. Dad laughed as he told us of ruining his work boots and catching a horrible cold, slogging around the lake in early November to stock their root cellar with katniss tubers so Mom would have them into the winter.

It reminded him of an ancient tale where a pregnant woman craved a special kind of lettuce so badly that she made her husband steal it from the neighbor’s garden, and the baby wound up named after it. _I told Alys it was hopeless,_ he said, chuckling, every time I begged him for the story. _You were bound and determined to be Katniss. Katniss kept me alive, so I could grow up to be your papa, and it kept your poor mama happy while she carried you._

I stare at Peeta’s exquisite sketches and wonder if he can possibly imagine how much it means to see them here. It’s yet another reminder of Dad; of my rustic but happy childhood with him, and to my astonishment, the memory isn’t accompanied by pain. “These are amazing,” I tell him, smiling. “You’ve studied this a lot. You must really like katniss.”

Peeta’s face instantly floods with crimson. “I-I…f-for you,” he stammers, looking away. I’d half thought he was unflappable, this calm, golden-tongued young man, but at the moment he’s blushing so hotly that my own skin prickles, while pointedly avoiding my eyes. “I wanted to…make you things,” he says, very unevenly, toying with a stray piece of charcoal on the work table. “Things…with katniss…for Katniss.”

I recall it now, and wonder how in the world I managed to forget, even for a moment. The cluster of blossoms on the sleigh, the wild pond of a bathtub, the embroidery on my coat: katniss leaves and flowers, recreated in the most beautiful, luxurious places. I knew they were intended for me and, likelier than not, made by Peeta’s own hand, but I didn’t realize what that meant. Peeta’s a Merchant boy; he would’ve had to ask someone – _who?_ – what katniss is, then find it in the lake and study it. I picture him at the work table, sketching intently, surrounded by samples of blossoms and leaves and tubers, and feel a flush of heat on my neck. 

 _It’s just a weed,_ I want to tell him. _An odd little water plant; not worth your time and talent. It isn’t very pretty, and the only useful parts are below the surface._ But it’s so much more than that. Katniss means life to my family; three generations of us, at least. Those inconspicuous white flowers on their strange spindly spikes have more than once led a starving Everdeen to a sustaining meal.

And it’s _me_. Peeta’s taken my namesake, mastered every facet of its appearance, and recreated it beautifully as some kind of emblem…for me. The coat I understand, a little – though it’s still an unbelievable luxury – but…he’s been driving all over the district in a sleigh painted with katniss flowers. Someone – Gale, if no one else – must have recognized that, and I burn with embarrassment for both of us. Peeta was, I suppose, just trying to be nice – making things _with katniss, for Katniss_ , though I can’t begin to imagine why that should include his sleigh – but people must have seen it as a lover’s token.

And if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that Peeta Mellark is not, nor ever could be, in love with me.

“Thank you,” I say, drawing Peeta’s eyes up from the work table. I seem to be making up for lost time today. It took me five years to thank him for the bread that saved my life, and now I can’t seem to stop thanking him. I suppose no other response seems appropriate. I’m not good with words, and every time I turn around, he’s offering me some food or a gift or the sort of kindness that knocks the breath from my body.

“I like all the katniss,” I add, since it doesn’t quite seem clear what I’m thanking him for. “It’s…well, not a very pretty plant, but…you’ve made it into something beautiful.”

He shakes his head with a small smile. His face is still deeply flushed. “It’s pretty enough,” he corrects me. “But I’m not what makes it beautiful.”

I don’t understand what he means, but something warm and bright flares in my chest.

We leave the room and Peeta opens the next door, the last on this side of the hallway. “This is my room,” he says simply, stepping aside to let me go in. “But if you’d rather have the lake view, we can switch.”

Somehow, this room is the most startling of all. The large windows face west, where the sun is already creeping toward the horizon, flooding the room with brilliant red-gold light.

The room is something of a twin to mine in layout, only where mine is like a dark forest, all greens and browns and pelts and smelling robustly of pine, his is like a drowsy fall afternoon, full of reds and oranges and smelling of a different aromatic wood – cedar, I realize. Merchant girls keep their wedding dresses in small chests made of it; Mom never had one, but Madge does, for future use. Peeta’s bed – narrower than mine and heaped with pale furs, with posters shaped like four slim tree trunks and a canopy of bare branches tangling above – is crafted from the ruddy golden wood, as are his two dressers. Where my walls are many shades of evergreen and textured with pine needles, his are patterned with autumn leaves: maple, birch, and oak, overlapping in vibrant earthy shades of brown and red and orange and yellow, so the actual color of the walls is indecipherable. Like mine, his room is hardwood-floored, but the pelts that serve as his rugs are dark brown, and his fireplace is formed of smoother-hewn stones, with veins of copper and gold that catch the sunlight.

It’s an opulent bedroom, at least as luxurious as mine, but what startles me most is that it exists at all. Until this moment, deep down, I’d believed Peeta slept in my bed last night – maybe even that it had been _his_ bed, and _I_ was the trespasser – but looking at this beautiful room, I realize what a fool I’ve been. Peeta is a wealthy young man with a bedroom full of furs and cedar and a fireplace that could be mined for precious metals. A bedroom with dented pillows and body-tousled covers and a faint smell of honey and cream and cloves. He most assuredly is _not_ sneaking into my room to rest his head on a pine needle pillow and moan sadly from the opposite side of the bed.

I feel so miserably stupid – and angry because of it – that I turn away to stare at the glinting mantle of the fireplace. Peeta has no reason to share my bed, nor does Pollux or Lavinia. Which means I imagined the whole thing – the footsteps, the weight on the mattress, the quiet moan – in my panic last night.

“Would you?” Peeta asks.

I look up at him, scowling, at a complete loss as to what he’s asking me, and he adds, a little sheepishly, “Would you rather have this room? I’m happy to switch, if that’s what you want.”

His persistent, ridiculous kindness is like a gentle pin, deflating my anger at the slightest nudge. I consider my room, with its dark wood, wild rock, and soft shadows, which is so intimately _me_ , and this room, which…isn’t. Peeta’s bedroom is all warmth and gold and sunset, as much like him as his enormous, bountiful kitchen and cozy little dining room. “Of course not,” I answer. “I like the room you gave me, and this one really fits you.”

“Thanks,” he says, smiling widely. “On both counts.”

We leave his bedroom, and Peeta crosses the hall to go into the bathroom, with its cave-shower and stone floor and drowned-blue walls. I hang back awkwardly, half afraid that he’s stopping to use the toilet, and wonder if I should close the door for him, but he waves me inside with an encouraging smile. “We’ll be sharing this bathroom,” he explains, “just you and I. I hope that’s okay?”

I had guessed as much this morning, and I shrug. “Sure,” I say. “It’s far too nice for just me to use.”

Peeta frowns as though he’d like to contradict me, but instead he goes over to the cave-shower and slides open the watery glass doors. “This part’s a little strange, but I think you’ll like it,” he says. “Have you used a shower before, Katniss?”

I bite back another scowl. He’s not being malicious or mocking; it’s just a question, and a fair one for at least two-thirds of the residents of District 12. I shake my head.

“Then I think I can safely say you’ll love this,” he tells me, grinning. “It’s a waterfall.”

I know what a waterfall is, sort of. Dad pointed some out to me when I was a child – tiny ones; a steady trickle down a rock face in some of the steeper areas of the woods – and larger, deadly versions have figured in at least one arena that I can recall, but this strange shower doesn’t particularly resemble either kind.

“It’s a little tricky to figure out, but Lavinia will help you,” Peeta says. “There are spouts built into the rock, controlled by buttons hidden in hollows and under ledges. You press one – ” He reaches two fingers into a crevice at chest height and quickly leaps back, almost colliding with me, as water pours down from a concealed spout at the very top of the rock wall.

I make a startled sound that might almost be delight. “That’s your basic setting,” Peeta explains, smiling. My reaction clearly pleased him, but I’m too intrigued by this waterfall-shower to be cross with myself for being so transparent. “Each wall has its own set of controls, and there are buttons and spouts hidden all over the place. I just found a new one last week, actually,” he admits with a laugh. “It takes some experimenting, but you can control where the water comes from, how hard and fast it flows, how warm or cold it is. You can run both sides and shower in the middle, or you can just use one side or the other.”

“What do you do?” I ask without thinking.

Peeta blushes, and I feel myself mirror it. “I usually use both sides,” he answers. “The rock walls are great for handholds to keep my balance, but I always end up sitting at least half the time.” He gestures awkwardly at the bench of smooth rock along the back wall of the cave. “I, um…I take off my leg to shower,” he says.

How had I forgotten his leg? Unbidden, my mind is filled with an image of naked Peeta, his right leg ending in a stump just below the knee, seated on the bench and lathering himself, with steaming waterfalls to either side of him. It’s a sad image, but it does something strange to my insides, not unlike when I smelled his soap in the shower this morning and found myself picturing him naked.

“Is it easier to take a bath?” I ask.

Peeta shrugs. “About the same,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about balance in the tub, but lifting myself out on one leg can be difficult.”

I wonder suddenly, and in a wild panic, if I’m here to help him with bathing. Peeta is sweet and kind and generous, and I owe him anything and everything he could ever ask for, but somehow, the thought of being around him naked, of tending to his naked body, is more than I can bear. I wonder if he’ll send me home in disgrace; if Mom and Prim will lose everything, simply because I can’t look at a naked man.

I wonder madly if he’d let Prim take my place. She’d be the most wonderful nurse – but then I’d have to explain, at least to Mom and Madge and Gale, why Peeta didn’t keep me, and I honestly think I would die of the shame.

My face is so hot, almost feverish, that I’m beginning to feel light-headed. “I-I can’t,” I stammer. “I’m sorry.”

“Can’t what?” Peeta asks. He sounds genuinely concerned, worried even. “Can’t use the shower? It’s a little tricky at first, but it’s fun once you figure it out. I…” He trails off and sighs, looking utterly crestfallen. “I really thought you’d like it,” he says.

“I can’t help you shower,” I blurt.

Peeta’s mouth falls open. I didn’t think it was possible for him to blush darker than I’ve already seen, but he can, and does.

I turn away, closing my eyes for good measure, and barrel on, “I’m really sorry. I-I could try but…I don’t think it would work. So you can send me home –”

“Katniss,” he croaks.

It’s physically impossible for me to look at him. “I’m sorry,” I say again, shaking my head, my eyes still closed tight. “I’m sorry you went through all this trouble for –”

“Katniss,” he tries again, stronger this time.

I dare the tiniest glance up at him. His pale face and throat are mottled with a beet-red flush, and he appears to be trying to smile, but it’s ending up as a grimace.  “I really, _really_ wish I could laugh about this,” he says, sounding pained, “just to ease your fears. Suffice it to say: I never expected you to help me with bathing, or…or dressing, or anything like that. I mean, I wouldn’t –” He breaks off abruptly, wincing, and stares at his shoes. “I manage okay on my own,” he says instead. “When I asked for your company, I didn’t mean…I meant the sort of thing we’ve been doing today. Meals together, and…just talking.”

And for the second time in five minutes, I feel like a complete idiot – but, at the same time, ridiculously _relieved_. “Okay,” I say, still not quite meeting his eyes. “That’s…good.”

He chuckles lightly and switches off the water. “Come on,” he says, brushing my arm with his fingertips. “There’s just one thing left to show you, and then you’ll have some time to yourself while I make supper.”

We return to the hallway, and Peeta goes to open the door on the other side of my bedroom; the only room that I haven’t seen yet. Like my bedroom, it has a fireplace of wild rock, albeit smaller and more simply crafted, and the walls are painted a smudged, woodsy green-brown, like forest shadows. There’s an armchair next to the fireplace, a desk and chair in front of the window, and a broad set of shelves, standing empty. It reminds me the slightest bit of Peeta’s art room, but I can’t imagine what it’s meant for.

“This is your room,” Peeta says happily.

“I thought my room was next door,” I puzzle, although this one certainly makes more sense. It’s about a third smaller than the bedroom, and I could sleep – comfortably – in the armchair. I don’t need a family-sized bed and furs and a huge fireplace.

Peeta shakes his head, smiling. “That’s your bedroom. This is…your room, to use as you like.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, wondering what I could possibly be missing.

“I have the studio,” he explains. “A room full of paints and paper and canvases, where I can hide out if I want and paint and sketch to my heart’s content. I don’t know what you like to do yet, but I wanted you to have a room for it. A hobby room, if you like.”

I frown. I’ve never had the leisure – or money – to develop a hobby or talent of any kind. Peeta’s giving me something unexpected and wonderful with this extra room, but I have nothing to do in it – nothing to use it for – and the realization shames me.

“You’re welcome to spend time in any room that you want, of course,” he clarifies, misinterpreting my expression. “I just thought you might like a place that was _all_ yours, to do whatever you like without anyone bothering you. Not that anyone here _is_ likely to bother you,” he adds quickly, looking miserable. “I mean – ”

“I get it,” I assure him, and scrounge up a small smile. “It’s…really generous of you. I just…I don’t know what I’ll have to do here,” I admit.

To my surprise, he brightens at that. “You could write a letter to Prim,” he suggests. “There’s paper and things in the desk. If you want, of course.”

It’s a great idea. I already have so much to tell her, and I probably won’t get this kind of free time again. “I’d like that,” I say. “Thanks.”

“Take all the time you need,” he tells me. “I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”

Peeta leaves to go downstairs, and I sit down at the desk. The topmost drawer holds pens, pencils, and envelopes; the second a tall stack of fine white paper; the kind Merchant kids do their homework on. I greedily take out three crisp sheets and begin to write.

I tell Prim about _everything_. Peeta’s ice-colored eyelashes. Lavinia’s startling red hair. Gently spiced hot chocolate, topped with toast cubes and honey, and pie-perfect slices of sweet-tart apple. A bed as wide as our entire bedroom back home, with a warming pan and soft sheets and pine needle pillows. Fireplaces everywhere, crackling with fragrant wood. The huge breakfast that made me cry. My beautiful new coat, with its embroidered katniss vines and lining of white bear’s fur. Ice skates and a snowball fight. Snow so pure you could eat it with a spoon. Peeta’s own scarf around my snowman’s neck. A sweet-shop of a pantry. A waterfall shower, and a bathtub like a pool in the woods.

I want her to smell everything; _taste_ everything: dense, buttery shortbread and strawberry tea; crispy-fried sausage, rich with apple and herbs; peaches simmered with brown sugar and nutmeg and splashed with cream; sunny-sweet orange juice and that single staggering bite of white chocolate. I want her to know how good the house smells: of freshly baked bread and griddle cakes, pine and cinnamon and cedar, sweet wood smoke and the quiet musk of fur. How good _Peeta_ smells, even. I blush a little as I describe being inside the bearskin with him: the comforting whiffs of fresh bread and ginger cake from his sweater, and the scent of his warm skin that made me want to press myself closer, to lay my face on his chest and breathe him in.

I don’t tell her about Peeta rubbing my feet, either time, or the unexpected kisses he placed there this afternoon. I don’t tell her about his whispered _Welcome home, Katniss_ , so like a kiss against my stocking cap. I don’t tell her about Avoxes, or that Peeta held me close while we talked of them. There was an intimacy in those moments that I can scarcely believe myself; that I neither want nor need to share with Prim. My little sister would only giggle and think it meant something: that I _like_ Peeta or, worse yet, that Peeta likes _me_. I still don’t know how to explain our bargain, but _liking_ had nothing to do with it.

I spare her the few unpleasant details; she still lives in the district, and sees plenty of those on a daily basis. I don’t tell her about the Capitol room, dusty and cold and silently sinister. I don’t tell her _why_ beautiful Lavinia and friendly Pollux can’t speak. And I certainly don’t tell her about Mom and Peeta’s father. Prim barely remembers Dad, but she really likes the baker, and she’ll see him almost every day. I can’t ruin their friendship simply because my curiosity got the better of me.

I kick off the fleecy slippers and tuck my bare feet under me, settling into the chair as I write. The woods outside my window grow dark, and Lavinia stops by to quietly build up the fire. I hadn’t noticed the room getting any colder and realize that the house must be heated, as well as lit, by electricity. The fireplaces help but aren’t essential – another indication of just how wealthy Peeta really is.

When I’m nearly finished, I go back and reread what I’ve written – to my astonishment, I’ve filled almost five pages, front and back. I’m not much of a storyteller, but my simple account of what’s happened so far sounds surprisingly like one of Dad’s old tales. A poor girl goes to live in a palace, with a handsome benefactor and silent servants, and is given fine clothes and the very best food and a beautiful room to sleep in. All that’s missing is a mystery of some kind; a riddle to be solved.

A soft knock startles me out of these ridiculous musings. “Katniss,” Peeta calls, his voice muffled slightly by the door. “Supper’s almost ready, if you’d like to come down.”

I can’t remember the last time someone called me for a meal. Breakfast today was the first full meal since Dad died that someone prepared _for_ _me_ – food I didn’t have to hunt or forage for and stretch as far as possible while trying, at the same time, to make pleasantly palatable with a pinch of salt or herbs. And what a meal it had been.

I smile and set down my pencil. “I’ll be right there,” I reply.

I follow my nose to the dining room which, owing to the darkness outside, seems somehow even cozier and more welcoming than it had been this afternoon. A cheery fire crackles behind the grate, casting merry shadows across the walls, and Peeta stands at the table, lighting three fat golden beeswax candles.

The table is set with dishes that match the teapot we used this afternoon – the same dishes we ate from this morning, no doubt, but I was too hungry to notice – generously sized white plates and deep bowls, rimmed with gold and patterned with pine branches and pinecones. I remember the gossip when Peeta came to town to collect his crate of dishes and wonder why he chose these in particular. The pattern fits his house – or at least, the parts I live in – but not him. Peeta is orange and red and yellow; cedar and sunset, not pine.

There’s a place set at one end of the table, and a second in front of the chair to its right. At the center of the table is a large covered tureen, painted all round with pine boughs, with a ladle beside it, and a round loaf of fresh bread.

Peeta looks up from the candles and smiles, blushing slightly. “It’s a bit fancy for soup and bread,” he says. “Sorry.”

He seats me at the end of the table, then takes the lid off the tureen and ladles out a bowlful of thick golden soup. He sets the bowl in front of me, and my stomach gives an eager lunge at the savory aromas rising in the steam.

“Pumpkin soup,” he explains. “It sounded good after such a cold day. I hope it’s all right,” he adds, a little abashed. “I browned your onion separately and added it last, so it would still have a bit of crunch.”

I stir the soup with my spoon to find hearty pale wedges of onion and small chunks of potato with their red skins still on. “This looks amazing,” I tell him, and devour a spoonful.

It’s _perfect_. The onions are tender and sweet but crisp, the potatoes firm on the spoon yet soft to the bite, and the pumpkin base…It’s like the very best squash I can imagine, only smooth and stringless, made buttery-rich with cream and something tangy that I can’t quite identify, with whispers of garlic, rosemary, and Peeta’s mild white pepper.

He cuts me a thick wedge of bread – the flaky center is swirled with crumbled sausage and green herbs – and I eagerly take a bite. The bread is steaming hot, soft and a little yeasty, and there’s a sweet, licorice-like note to the sausage – fennel seed, I think – perfectly matched to the pockets of bright, pungent herbs. I moan at the heady combination of flavors and dip the bread into my soup before taking another bite.

I’m delving into my second bowlful with my third piece of sausage-stuffed bread before I manage to raise my eyes to Peeta, who’s smiling and waiting patiently to start a conversation. I’m mortified by my blinding appetite but console myself with the fact that he’s working on a second bowl as well. The air between us is heavy with the honeylike fragrance of melting beeswax and the warmth of the flames; the candles have burned down at least a half-inch since I arrived, filling the room with their earthy-sweet scent.

“I’m really sorry,” I tell him. “It’s just so _good_.”

“Don’t be,” he says, smiling so broadly that it must hurt his face. “I’m really glad you’re enjoying it. How’s the letter coming?”

“I feel a little guilty,” I admit, “telling Prim about all these good things.” Especially since I agreed to Peeta’s bargain so _she_ could have good things: a new house and food and clothes. _I_ wasn’t supposed to get anything out of the deal, except maybe a job and a place to sleep.

I know Prim won’t mind, of course; it’ll be like a fairytale for her, reading about Peeta’s house with its luxurious rooms and costly, delicious meals. But I can’t help it. I’m used to giving her every last nice thing I can lay hands on, be it a colorful hair ribbon or a single square of chocolate or her very own goat. And here I am, enjoying feasts and ice skates and a huge bed blanketed with fur, and I hadn’t thought of Prim until I started telling her about them.

“You _do_ realize: my dad’s looking after her now,” Peeta says, grinning. “He always wanted a daughter – and he _really_ likes your sister. I expect he’s spoiling the living daylights out of her,” he tells me, and laughs – a warm, infectious laugh that makes me lean a little closer. “As we speak, she’s probably dressed head to foot in pink lace, with a slice of cake in each hand.”

I chuckle at his image of a pretty, pampered Prim, all shiny hair and pink ribbons and smiles full of frosting. It’s so _right_ – it’s what I’d hoped for, really, when I agreed to Peeta’s bargain, trading myself to make my family rich. “Prim’s easy to love,” I say, dipping my bread into the soup to guide a potato onto my spoon.

“So are –”

Peeta breaks off suddenly, causing me to look up in surprise. He’s staring fixedly down at his soup bowl, his lips bitten together as though he’s in pain. “Dad likes you too,” he says quietly. His voice shakes a little.

I wonder what he meant to say. Surely not that _I’m_ easy to love. The only people who’ve managed it in sixteen years are Dad and Prim – and Mom, I suppose.

But I consider what he _did_ say and immediately think of the baker holding me as I cried over the hamper of food. Of how wonderful it felt, for those brief moments, to be comforted by a man’s arms. We’ve always had a great trading relationship, Mr. Mellark and I. He’s always been kind and generous, almost foolishly so, but I can’t say he’s ever shown me affection before. But if what Peeta says is true, maybe he’d wanted to but thought I’d rebuff it – which I certainly would have done.

And I know now what I didn’t before – that Peeta’s father had loved my mother once; had had his heart broken by her, most likely – so the notion of him feeling _anything_ for me, aside from a grudging sort of gratitude for the herbs and squirrels I bring, makes even less sense. Sweet, sunny Prim is one thing; people genuinely adore her. They fall all over themselves to be kind to her, as well they should, and the baker no less than anyone. But dark, scowling Katniss is something else entirely. I’m unlikable enough as I am, without the mother who broke his heart.

I turn my attention back to my soup and try to forget the whole thing. Peeta finishes his own bowl in silence, then excuses himself and goes out to the kitchen. I wonder if I’ve angered him – for once, I hadn’t said anything caustic or rude – and then he returns, smiling once more, his hands full with a small dark cake on a decorative platter and a little ceramic pitcher. He sets both on the table beside me, and I can’t hold back a gasp of delighted surprise.

It’s a ginger cake, about one-third the size of the one he made for my family yesterday, and the little pitcher is full of piping hot custard. It’s perfect for two people to share – or one hungry Katniss to devour. “Peeta,” I protest, coloring slightly, “what did you make another one of these for?”

“For you, of course,” he laughs. “I know you didn’t have all you wanted – Prim told me so, in the sleigh. She said you gave half of the cake to the Hawthornes and had three tiny slices of what was left, and Madge ate your last bite.”

I resolve to add an angry note to Prim’s letter, telling her not to gossip about me, let alone to Peeta. He wouldn’t have had to wheedle in the least; he could have simply looked at her and she would have told him anything he wanted to know – and even more so if he’d asked. I’m embarrassed at the thought of Peeta knowing how much I loved his cake, but at the same time, grateful for it. Maybe it was my desperate hunger, but I’ve never tasted anything quite so delicious as that ginger cake and have never wanted another helping of anything quite so badly.

“Thanks,” I say weakly. My mouth is watering at the haze of molasses and ginger rising from the warm cake, and I wonder if Peeta would care if I simply grabbed a fistful and stuffed it into my mouth. After all, it isn’t sliced yet.

Grinning, he produces two clean spoons from his trouser pocket and I hear myself laugh. Laugh like I laughed on the lake today, and in the snow. It’s a startling, merry, almost musical sound, and it feels exquisitely _good_. How have just a few hours in Peeta’s company managed to pull _laughter_ out of me?

Peeta’s expression softens in response. He’s still smiling at me, but there’s something strange in his eyes that makes my eager stomach flutter. “I don’t mind if you don’t,” he teases, offering me one of the spoons.

The corners of my mouth curve up in an involuntary response – a smile, and a playful one – as I take the spoon. Peeta pours a small pool of custard over the entire little cake, and we dig in from opposite sides, lifting custard-drenched spoonful after spoonful to our mouths and exchanging small, furtive grins. The cake is oven-fresh and even better than yesterday’s, dense and moist and staggering with spices, and Peeta pours on more custard as it disappears into the cake or our mouths. When our spoons finally touch at the center of the sticky platter, we’ve cleaned up the entire pitcher’s worth of custard and half a cake each, crumbs and all.

Peeta nudges the last bite toward me with the tip of his spoon. “Go on,” he laughs, flopping back into his chair. “I can’t deny you anything.”

“Thanks, Madge,” I tease, and gobble up the final bite of cake without shame as Peeta grins back at me. I feel so good and warm and full that I hardly recognize myself. My stomach is happily content with the rich, soothing foods, and my taste buds are dancing from the variety of flavors.

It’s the most comfortable moment I’ve had with Peeta yet. We’ve both had plenty to eat – and then some – we’ve laughed while sharing a whole little cake, and now we’re smiling at each other across the corner of the table, with the crackling hearth to one side of us and the gentle flames of the heady beeswax candles to the other. In this moment I can forget the bargain, the tasks I’m sure to be assigned any minute now, and the fact that I’ll be living here forever. Right now, _forever_ in this house – in this room, even – sounds like a wonderful prospect.

Peeta’s smile wavers ever so slightly. “Katniss, why did-?” he says, only to pause, shaking his head, and rephrase the question. “What kind of bread do you like?” he asks, smiling brightly. “I meant to ask earlier.”

“Ginger?” I suggest, only half-kidding, and he laughs.

“Gingerbread’s not all that different from this, really, unless you’re talking about cookies,” he says, gesturing at the empty platter. “But I could make it as a sort of quick bread, if you like. It would be good with goat cheese and applesauce.”

“That sounds amazing,” I tell him honestly, already aching to taste it.

He chuckles. Peeta’s always been good-natured, but there’s something almost… _blissful_ about him tonight. His laughter, his easy smiles…I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier, except maybe that strange euphoric moment when we first arrived last night. “Fair enough,” he says, “but what about _bread_ bread?” He motions at the lonely heel of the sausage-stuffed bread, the only bit we didn’t finish with our soup. “I bake every morning, and I want to make bread that you like.”

“Oh,” I say. “Um…I’ll eat anything, really.” I blush at the thought of how true that is. I’ve lived on pine bark, organ meats, roots – everything but dirt and waste, really.

“Yes, but you don’t need to anymore,” he says gently. “I’ll make whatever you want. Do you like herbs? Nuts? Seeds? Sweet things?”

My stomach growls eagerly in spite of its hearty contents. “It all sounds good,” I assure him. “I love bread.” And I realize, in saying that, I’ve already started to change. Before this evening I would never have admitted to liking – let alone _loving_ – something I knew I couldn’t have.

“Then it’s handy I’m a baker’s son,” he answers, grinning broadly. “And we have plenty of time to experiment. I can make a different kind of bread every morning –”

“Oh!” I interrupt at a sudden thought. “Breakfast! I’m so sorry about this morning – but I’ll be up to cook tomorrow,” I promise.

“No need,” he says softly, and leans forward to touch my cheek with a fingertip. “Sleep as late as you like. There’s no school tomorrow, after all,” he reminds me with a crooked smile.

It’s far from late, but it feels like I’m being dismissed for the night. As though Peeta has nothing for me to do and is giving me the rest of the evening for whatever activities I choose. “I’ll do the dishes, then,” I say, and start to rise, but Peeta’s hand covers mine on the tabletop, gently checking the motion.

“I’ll clean up,” he tells me, his bright eyes very serious. “I _want_ to, Katniss.”

I look at his hand on mine, at the fine golden hairs dusting his pale wrist. “Okay,” I whisper. I know this – Peeta working while I play – won’t last forever, but in this moment, a small part of me can’t resist embracing the fairytale. I want to go back to that little room – my very own room, just for leisure – with its plush carpet and desk and fireplace and spin another unbelievable yarn for my little sister.

“Is – is it all right if I work on Prim’s letter a little more?” I ask. I’ll need another page, at the least, to tell her about supper, and I’m certain I won’t have this kind of free time again.

“Of course,” Peeta says without hesitation. “We can even send her a little present, if you want.”

“ _Really?”_ I wonder, thrilled in spite of myself. It’s been at the back of my mind – to send Prim some small treasure from the beautiful house in the woods – ever since I reread my letter, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask anything of Peeta, let alone a gift for my sister, for whom he’s already providing every comfort.

“Of course,” he says again, smiling warmly, and gives my hand a little squeeze. “Anything you like. Just let me know.”

He releases my hand then, but I find my body strangely reluctant to move. This room, the food, the flames, Peeta’s company…it’s warm and pleasant as the very best dream. The part of me that had wanted to work on Prim’s letter just a moment ago is now perfectly content to remain here.

Scowling inwardly at my foolishness, I shift my stubborn limbs, hefting myself to my feet. “Well…good night, then,” I say.

“Good night, Katniss,” he answers softly.

I return to the desk and pick up the letter where I left off. I tell Prim about pumpkin soup, made with the onion I wanted so badly; the sausage-stuffed bread; the impossibly cozy dining room; and the incredible ginger cake – which, I joke, was entirely her fault. I don’t say anything about a present, though, just in case Peeta changes his mind.

I’ve just signed off on the letter when there’s a light rap on the door and Lavinia peeks in. I’m not quite sleepy yet, though I suppose I could change for bed, and I tell her as much, but she shakes her head and pantomimes scrubbing herself.

“Wash up?” I say. “I didn’t really get dirty today, but I suppose I could.”

She shakes her head again and gestures down the hallway toward the bathroom, then mimes what looks like rain falling over her. “Wash…rain…shower?” I guess. “You want me to take a shower?”

She spreads her elegant white hands and shrugs. _If you want to_ , it seems to say.

I consider the offer. I just took a bath yesterday, maybe the most thorough one I’ve ever had in my life, and I certainly don’t need another yet, but the waterfall shower _does_ intrigue me. A quick wash might be all right, just to see how it works. And I’m so comfortable right now; a shower in that beautiful cave would be the perfect end to this lush feast of a day.

I follow Lavinia down to the bathroom, where she’s already assembled a stack of thick, downy towels on a stool outside the shower, plus a soft green robe that I haven’t seen before but, I infer, must be mine. She gestures between me and the robe, miming getting undressed, then she closes the hall door and disappears into my bedroom, granting me privacy.

Despite how cool and watery the bathroom looks, especially on a winter night, it _feels_ toasty-warm. I quickly peel out of my clothing, folding it as I go, then slip into the plush, voluminous robe. I unbraid my hair too, combing out the kinks with my fingers.

Lavinia doesn’t return right away, and I find myself wondering why she suggested a shower – and, obviously, prepared for me to take one before I’d even agreed to it. It’s a luxury I’ve never had before, to be sure, but this close to my last bath, it seems almost ridiculous. I wonder if Peeta mentioned it to her after our tour. After all, he said she would teach me how to use the shower. It just seems so _soon_ …and then – _stupid, stupid Katniss!_ – I realize it’s not soon at all.

How had I failed to see what lay behind Peeta’s gentle generosity? It’ll be tonight. Of course it will. I’m rested, well-fed, _settled_ now. Peeta left me alone last night out of kindness and has gone to almost unbelievable lengths today to ensure my comfort. Maybe the shower is just another part of that, or maybe he wants me to be cleaner than a Seam washtub can achieve. For certain, he’ll want a soft, sweet-smelling girl between the sheets.

I grasp at the outside wall of the cave shower to steady my trembling legs and suck in rapid, shallow breaths, fighting the bile rising in my throat. _Gentle Peeta,_ I remind myself frantically, recalling his small, halting touches. _Kind Peeta. He’ll make sure it hurts as little as possible._

 _Maybe that’s why he’s telling you not to worry about breakfast tomorrow,_ a voice whispers in my head. _He expects you to be…well, worn out._

I shake my head fiercely, trying to clear it of such thoughts. Peeta will be kind in bed. _He might even do something that feels_ good, I admit, recalling his hands and lips on my feet this afternoon. And he’s certainly not repulsive. He’ll smell of yeast and shortbread and woodsmoke tonight; his mouth will taste of pumpkin soup and sausage-bread and ginger cake. The thought of the _act_ makes me shiver and feel sick, but I can bear it for Peeta’s sake. After all, maybe the girl he loved _did_ refuse him, and this beautiful dream of a house is for naught. I can let this lonely, gentle young man take some physical pleasure from me in return for all of his kindness.

Lavinia opens the door from my bedroom then, making me start, and comes over to me at once, her fine features gravely concerned. I’m struggling to keep calm, but I still have a hand braced on the rock wall and am bent over a little. She mimes rubbing her stomach with a grimace and looks at me questioningly; wondering if I’m sick, I think.

“No,” I tell her, then wish I’d lied. My shaky, nauseous behavior makes no sense otherwise.

She frowns, unsatisfied, but steps back to unbutton and roll up her sleeves. I straighten with another shallow breath, releasing my grip on the rock wall, and she brings a tentative hand to my back, rubbing small, soft circles between my shoulder blades. I realize she’s at a loss as to what’s wrong but is trying to comfort me as best she can, and surprisingly enough, it helps. There’s something almost maternal in her touch; it reminds me of being sick as a child, and Mom stroking my back as she coaxed me to drink a little water or broth.

After a minute or so of this, Lavinia peers hopefully into my face, wondering, no doubt, if I’m feeling any better. I nod and thank her, and she slides open the glass doors at the mouth of the cave. She reaches up to one rock wall, then turns back to take my hand and guide it into the hollow at chest height where Peeta switched on the water this afternoon. There’s a tiny dial there, and it turns with a soft click, sending water – ice-cold – down the rock wall. I yelp as it splashes my bare feet and try to pull back, but Lavinia holds my hand steady and prompts me to turn the dial a little further. I do, a careful fraction at a time, and the water grows steadily warmer till it cascades, balmy as a summer’s day, down the wall.

Lavinia releases my hand and gestures for me to take my robe off. I hesitate for a moment. She’s seen me half-naked, of course, but that was only for a split second as she helped me into my nightgown. Once I surrender the robe, I’ll be naked – _completely_ naked, in a room I can hardly hide in – until she gives it back. Then again, I’m in this house _forever_ , and before the night is over I’ll be naked for _Peeta_. Shivering at the thought, I slip out of the robe.

Lavinia takes it from me with a small, distressed sound, her eyes on my midsection, and I realize she’s looking at how thin I am. Despite all the nourishing food I’ve eaten today, my ribs and hipbones are still prominent from long weeks of hunger. The rest of me is lean and rangy, with scarcely a curve in sight. Even my shoulders feel birdlike and hollow.

She shakes her head, her dark eyes sad, and gently ushers me into the cave. The water is, rather unhelpfully, running straight down over the rocks, but it splashes out in places, and I can improvise. I bring both hands into the stream – it’s _so_ wonderfully warm – and sigh. I’m about to duck my head under a little ledge when Lavinia gives a chuckle and tugs me back.

“No?” I puzzle.

She takes my hand and guides it to a prominent dark brown rock just above my head, and I find another small dial. I turn this one just a fraction and the water spray falls a little higher – as though I’m angling the hidden spout up and out. I turn the dial a little more and the water jets past the rock wall to fall a foot or so in front of it. A warm cascade of water, perfectly placed for a slender bather. I take an eager step forward, only for Lavinia to tug me back again, plunging her arm into the spray.

So _that’s_ why she rolled her sleeves up. I give her an exasperated look, and she grins. She points at another rock, a sandy yellow one at waist-level, and I trace it with my wet fingers till I find a small button. I press it, a little wary of her mirth, and gloriously warm water sprays out from a hidden spout to spill over my ribs. She shows me another, just opposite my right shoulder, that sends a pleasant cross-current through the main fall of water, then waves a hand along the rock wall. _More_ , she mouths.

I remember Peeta’s words about hidden buttons and spouts; about there being so many, so well hidden, that _he_ just found a new one. And I’m only on one side of the cave. I try to imagine having all spouts running on both rock walls – warm steamy water coursing across the cave from every direction – and my knees go a little weak.

Lavinia smiles and gestures at the ledge on the back wall of the cave, which holds three distinct sets of bottles. She points to the first, then at her hair; at the second, then at her face; at the third, then at her body. Different soaps for hair, face, and body?

“I need three different soaps?” I ask, frowning. “For one shower?” I consider telling her that I’ve bathed with our harsh laundry soap, top to toe, for the past sixteen years.

She nods, smiling, and gestures emphatically at the ledge of bottles, then she ducks out of the shower and slides the watery blue glass doors closed behind her.

I step into the stream of water and moan. I always imagined a shower would be something like standing in the rain, but this is a hundred times more pleasant. The water falls heavy and ceaseless and _so_ warm, pouring deliciously over my body. It smells faintly like lake water, only better, and I realize it’s probably piped in from the lake – filtered somewhere along the way, and _thawed_ , of course, at this time of year – but it still carries with it faint odors of wet stone and mud and water weeds. Rather than feeling removed from my former life in the woods, this makes me feel somehow more connected.

Once my hair is wet through, I reach for the foremost of the bottles in the first section on the ledge. A tall, slim tube of pearlescent plastic, it features a picture of a pretty Capitol woman with an unlikely cloud of lush lavender curls billowing about her face. Shrugging, I uncap the bottle and pour out a palmful of shimmery gray liquid, winking here and there with little flecks of silver. It smells floral and spicy, like cinnamon and lily-of-the-valley or something even more exotic, but I work it in, curious, and am astonished at how sleek my hair is when I go to wash it out. I did no more than finger-comb the soap through, and yet there’s not a single tangle. My hair, slick and smooth, drapes my shoulders like a shawl of silk.

Delighted by the effect, I reach for a small bottle in the center section – this one is pale blue and patterned all round with a Capitol-glamorized version of trailing chamomile – and squeeze out a little dollop of something creamy. I massage it over my face, breathing in the sweet, ferny scent that I know so well from harvesting for Mom, and wonder if it’s the same thing Lavinia put on the washcloth last night. My skin seems to drink it up; when I rinse my face, there is no soap residue to be seen. I wonder idly if Lavinia has any more of the thick rose-scented cream she put on my skin last night before bed. My chapping has already begun to fade, and I hardly need such a luxury, but it felt _so_ good.

I turn last to the bottles in the third section. I don’t need anything frivolous – _anything_ more, _at least,_ I chuckle – so I reach around the colorful, decorative ones at the front for a stout brown bottle with a label lettered in copper. I uncap and upend it, as I did with the others, and a pool of pale gold liquid, the color of creamed honey – _of Peeta’s hair,_ I think irrationally – spills out over my palm.

The scent I know as _Peeta_ – honey and cream and cloves, amplified by the heat of the shower – floods the cave and I gasp, shoving the bottle back onto the ledge. This is _his_ soap, and I’ve poured out more than a little. _Will he be furious?_ I wonder frantically, and answer myself just as quickly, _No, of course he won’t. He’ll understand; it’s a simple enough mistake to make._

I look at the pool of soap in my hand, furious with myself. I could try to put it back in the bottle, but I’d probably make a bigger mess and spill even more of it. And this is costly Capitol soap; I can’t waste it.

I bring the soap-filled hand to my chest, rubbing the liquid onto my skin, and shudder. The soap forms a slippery gold-tinted lather that coats my fingers, making my hands feel like someone else’s as they move over my tiny breasts, then lower, over my belly and backside, and flit over the place between my legs, the patch of black curls that I never give more than a cursory soap-and-rinse. I’m enveloped by the scent of Peeta’s body; half-drunk with it, coupled with the warm spray of the shower, pouring steady sheets of steaming water over my body. It’s as though he’s in the cave with me, bathing me with his own strong hands, brushing them over my most intimate places. I wipe a smudge of soap from my inner thigh and my breath skitters from my lungs in a ragged exhalation.

The image of naked Peeta crashes into my mind – all pale skin and golden hair, with warm water coursing down his muscular body and eddying about his navel…and lower – making my chest and throat burn with a painful flush. My mind goes hazy, dreamlike. This is what’s waiting for me in bed tonight, after all: Peeta Mellark’s firm body and warm hands, the scent of his skin in my lungs. It’s only right that I smell like him now; before this night is over, I’ll have his sweat on my body. The thought triggers a dizzying mix of terror and anticipation.

There’s a knock on the glass then, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Lavinia slides the door open a little ways – ascertaining if I’m finished – and sniffs curiously, raising her brows.

“I grabbed the wrong soap,” I blurt, my cheeks flaming. “I’m s-sorry. Will Peeta be angry?”

She smiles slowly and shakes her head. With a little help, I locate all the buttons and dials to shut off the water, then Lavinia dries me gently with warmed towels of thirsty plush. When my body is dry, she wraps my still-damp hair in a towel on top of my head, helps me into my robe and slippers, and ushers me back to my bedroom.

I’m almost surprised to find the bed empty. In my panic, I’d half-assumed I’d find Peeta there, but I guess he wants to wait till I’m tucked in and comfortable. The rack in front of the fireplace holds a soft, cream-colored nightgown, thicker and heavier than the green one from last night. I suppose Peeta likes his lovers to be warm when he comes to them.

Lavinia points me toward the dressing table and smiles. There’s a little crock filled with what looks like soft cubes of bread, a mug of tea, and a little pitcher of cream. Peeta’s sent me a bedtime snack. In spite of everything, I feel a bubble of exasperated laughter nudge its way up my throat. He’s scarcely stopped feeding me for an hour all day. And the funny thing is, somehow, I’m still hungry – or, at least, hungry enough for this.

I go to the dressing table and pick up the mug. It smells a bit like Peeta’s ginger cake, deep and rich and spicy, and I already know I’ll want cream in it. _Silly Katniss,_ I chide. _One day in a rich man’s house and you want luxury at every turn._

I’ve just lifted the mug to my lips when the realization strikes, cold and breathless: Peeta’s drugging me. He might even mean it as a kindness. He knows I don’t want him – maybe even thinks I _can’t_ want him – and wants to make the experience as painless as possible for me. But I can’t do it. It’s like knowing you’re going to be poisoned, and then being forced to take the poison from your own hand.

I set the mug down, unsipped, and sit carefully at the dressing table, breathing shallowly. I don’t want to have sex with Peeta, but I’d rather be aware of it than to wake in pain tomorrow and wonder what was done to me. And he deserves, at the very least, a conscious lover. I don’t want this – I barely even _understand_ it – and I know it’ll be unpleasant, but I can at least try to make it good for Peeta. He deserves that, after all. This sweet boy who fed me with his own hands, who held me while I trembled at Capitol horror stories. This boy who rubbed my feet because he knew I wanted it – who _kissed_ my feet.

I think of the soft nudge of his lips against my arches, the moist warmth of his breath on my skin, and shiver. It won’t be awful, not really. It’ll hurt, but Peeta will be kind. And I’m strong; I can bear it.

I look up in the mirror to see Lavinia watching me, frowning slightly, and realize that my face has gone pale with fear. She turns me gently to face her and raises her eyebrows in question. I shake my head. “It’s…I’m all right.” I assure her. “Just not hungry.”

Her frown deepens, and she reaches into the collar of her dress to draw out a small slate on a cord, about half the size of the one Pollux carries. She’s hasn’t written me any message yet, and I wonder what could be so important to make her break that silence now.

She takes the tiny stub of chalk from its bracket on one side of the slate and writes something brief, no more than a word or two, and then turns the slate for me to read.

_No harm._

“From…you?” I ask warily. Up till now, I hadn’t considered her a threat. I wonder, worriedly, if I should have.

She makes an all-encompassing gesture. “In this house?” I ask. She scowls and makes the gesture again, this time including herself. “From all of you?” She nods fiercely and points at the food on the dressing table.

I understand what she means now and wonder how obvious I’ve been. “Peeta,” I choke. “Peeta means me no harm.” I knew that, deep down, but somehow it carries more weight, coming from this woman who was enslaved and mutilated by the Capitol. If anyone has grounds to be overly cautious, it’s her. But she seems entirely at ease with Peeta – almost bantering with him, through her expressions.

She turns the slate back again and adds another message: _Will never hurt you._ As I watch, she underlines _never_ three times. And as though that weren’t enough reassurance, she picks up the mug and takes a long sip, then smiles and rubs her stomach – the sort of gesture you make to show a child that something is good – and I laugh. “Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll try it.”

The tea is delicious, of course, malty like my afternoon cup but heavy with cinnamon and ginger, and a splash of cream only makes it better. Encouraged, I try a spoonful of the crock’s contents – it _is_ bread cubes, soaked in something rich and baked to resemble a dense cake – and feel the evening’s anxieties melt away, almost at once. It’s a plain dish – warm bread and cinnamon and nutmeg, perhaps with a little egg and milk to hold it together – and yet it’s the most comforting food I’ve ever eaten. Though I’ve never had anything like it in all my life, it tastes like _home_. Like crackling hearths and soft covers and strong arms, keeping me safe. I eat another bite, and another and another, eagerly but without haste, and can barely draw my eyes up from the crock to ask Lavinia, “What _is_ this?”

She looks at me for a long moment, then picks up the slate again. _Ask him_ , she writes.

I wonder if she’s being deliberately obtuse in this, but she’s not smirking, not even smiling. “Okay,” I concede, then, smiling a little myself, tease, “See how much easier _this_ –” I gesture between us – “is when you talk to me?”

She quirks one perfect black brow, the smallest of smiles playing about her lips, then she tugs my chair away from the dressing table and the remainder of my food, relocating me in front of the fireplace. It’s a playful, almost sisterly thing to do, and I wonder whether, before all this, Lavinia had sisters of her own. I wonder if they were older or younger than her.

She retrieves the crock and mug for me, amid a grin or two, and turns me so my back is to the fire, then she unwraps the towel around my hair and proceeds to comb it out, over and over again, carefully pressing out the water with a second, fresh towel. It feels ridiculously good – like yesterday, when Mom combed and trimmed my hair after my bath, but even _better_. I’m being pampered, having my newly sleek hair dried in gentle degrees.

While she works, I finish the tea and the crock of spiced bread-cake. Once my hair is dry – even my scalp no longer feels damp, thanks to her clever combing and pressing – Lavinia weaves it into a very loose braid and helps me dress for bed. The clean underwear she hands me are my own, graying and threadbare, from home, but it’s a comfort, that most intimate of garments coming from my life before. The nightgown is feather-soft and almost too warm; I hardly need the heat from the warming pan tonight, but I know my toes will be grateful for it.

I return to the bathroom to clean my teeth with a tingling paste that tastes of anise and cinnamon, and Lavinia – to my delight – retrieves the jar of rose-scented Capitol cream. She swabs it over my entire face tonight, working it into my thirsty skin with her soft fingertips, then she dollops a little into the palm of my right hand and gestures for me to rub my hands together. I do so with pleasure.

She tucks me into bed, just as she did last night, but this time she pauses a moment, looking very thoughtful, and bends to press a kiss to my forehead. It’s such a tender, parental gesture that my eyes sting a little. “Thank you, Lavinia,” I whisper, and with a little curtsey, she turns out the lights and leaves the room.

Between the warm shower, Lavinia’s ministrations, and that remarkable bread-cake, I’m surprisingly drowsy. I tug the nearest pine needle pillow into place beneath my cheek – its fragrance, too, is a particular comfort – and close my eyes. I’m not afraid now. Peeta won’t hurt me; Lavinia promised as much, which means he can’t intend what I feared earlier. And if not for that, he’ll have no reason to come to my bed.

I’m drifting at the edge of sleep when I hear the door open and the footsteps approaching the opposite side of the bed. I tense up, wide awake now, and brace for the weight on the mattress. _That’s not what he’s here for,_ I tell myself, as I hear the person undress. _It might not even be him._ After all, Peeta has that beautiful bedroom of autumn and sunset, with its bed of cedar trunks and fireplace veined with gold. He has no reason to cross the hall and get into bed with me.

But if not Peeta, then _who?_ Lavinia has an entire attic with a pretty bed of her own, and Pollux has his cozy loft above the stable. I remember Peeta saying something about Pollux coming to stay in the house on cold nights; could he be so tired he went to the wrong room? Then again, Pollux has proved himself a playful character. Could he have come to my bed on purpose, as a joke of some kind?

The person draws back the blankets, lies down, and gives a sudden, sharp intake of breath. A gasp.

 _Why?_ I wonder wildly. What did they see or feel? What about me is so awful as to cause a gasp? I’m fully covered by the nightgown and my hair is braided, loose but neat. I reach to the back of my head, touching my braid and shoulders in search of something out of place, and I feel the person – or rather, their weight on the mattress – stiffen. Their breath halts. It’s as though they’re willing themselves invisible.

The hunter in me recognizes it before the confused, half-frightened girl. I’ve seen this behavior in game a hundred times – very nearly on a daily basis – and last night, I saw it in myself. The moment when they know they’re caught – sighted – and they still all movement in hopes of disappearing into the landscape. This person doesn’t want me to know they’re here. They’re _afraid_ of me knowing that they’re here.

I bring my hand back in front of me and deliberately slow my breath, hoping to pass off the gesture as a sub-conscious one and reassure the person of my state of slumber. After a few moments they release their own caught breath and carefully draw the blankets up over us, their rigid body softening against the mattress. They make no further sound nor move toward me; still, I wait for their breathing to even out in sleep before I dare to close my eyes again.

I pinch myself once, a quick, sharp nip at the thin skin of my wrist, but I’m not sure what I’m hoping to prove. I am most assuredly _not_ dreaming, nor was I last night. There is a silent stranger in my bed – _no, not silent._ Last night they gave a moan, tonight a gasp, and then lay, still and quiet, till they fell asleep.

I could turn over and look; the room is dark by the dying firelight, but I could still make out the color of a head of hair, if I chose. And yet something inside me resists fiercely, as though it’s forbidden. As though _I_ would be the trespasser, to turn and look on my companion – who clearly, if inexplicably, fears my notice – in their vulnerability of slumber.

Prim’s fairytale is now complete in every detail. There _is_ a mystery here, and tonight it has only deepened.


	9. To Win the Trust of a Wild Creature

_This same occurrence happened every night when the candle’s light was blown out.  
__The young girl never spoke of it in the daylight, fearing that the white bear might become angry.  
_ ~ _East of the Sun and West of the Moon,_ retold by Kathleen and Michael Hague

***

_"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince._

_"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me - like that - in the grass. I_  
_shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings._  
_But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."_  
_~The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, translated by Katherine Woods

 

_I dream, deeper and more vibrantly than I ever have before. I’m standing in the cave shower, but the ceiling is open to the sky. It’s midnight above, black and cold and bright with a waning moon, but beneath the warm spray I’m golden, my olive skin honeylike and shimmering as I lather myself with slippery palmfuls of liquid sunlight. The cave smells of the lake and the woods and of Peeta – of his soap and his skin and perhaps, faintly, of bread and ginger cake as well. My body hums like a current, as though anticipating something._

_I hear the glass doors slide open behind me, and I stiffen but don’t turn around. The smell of Peeta is suddenly overwhelming, and my knees give a little, forcing me to catch at the rock wall for a hand-hold._

_“I’d never hurt you, Katniss,” Peeta’s voice says softly. “Not ever.”_

_“I know,” I whisper. Still I don’t turn around._

_I feel a hand at the nape of my neck, warm fingers gently drawing my wet hair to lie over my left shoulder. The hand lingers on that shoulder, a large hand with strong pale fingers, and I turn my head just enough to rub my cheek against those fingers._

_A gasp comes from behind me, almost at my ear, and I feel lips at the nape of my neck; soft, dry lips brushing wet skin. I tremble wildly, but not with fear, and my hands slip from the rock wall. I sink backward, unafraid, into strong arms that not only brace but welcome me –_

* * *

I wake with a start, flexing my shoulder blades against the mattress to catch myself. It’s a little after sunrise. I’m alone in my bed, the covers tucked snugly around me, but I can still smell Peeta: the heady yet comforting scent of honey, cream, and cloves drenching warm skin.

It takes a moment to recall that I used his soap last night – the slippery pale gold I lathered on in my dream. My skin was saturated with it. It’s _me_ that I smell. Peeta was never here.

But _someone_ was.

I turn onto my side and lean up on an elbow, contemplating the other side of the bed, which has been neatly made once more. Someone is coming to my bed in the dark of night, lying beneath the covers, then rising before I wake and tidying their side of the bed so it appears no one was ever there. But which of the three can it be?

Lavinia seems the likeliest, especially after last night. She knew I was afraid – of Peeta’s expectations and being drugged to fulfill them – and did everything she could to reassure me. Maybe she thought it would help for me not to sleep alone.

Now I think on it: it _did_ help. I don’t know whether it was the luxurious bed or the company or a combination of the two, but I’ve slept better since coming to Peeta’s house than I ever have in my life. Both last night and the night before, I slept soundly; deep and long. I was warm and full and comfortable and, despite my fears when awake, untroubled by nightmares. And really, I’m not accustomed to sleeping alone. I’ve shared a bed with Prim for as long as I can remember, and I’d even half-wished for a bed partner my first night here.

I stroke my fingers over the pillow opposite me, imagining the cheek of my silent companion against the silky cotton, and wonder if it really _matters_ who it is. In the dark of night, someone comes quietly to this enormous bed to share my covers and our body heat. They don’t come near me or interfere with me in any way, and their presence provides a certain comfort, at least to my sleeping mind.

Maybe they think I’m lonely. Peeta knows I used to sleep with Prim, after all, and arranging for a bed partner might simply be another of his unexpected kindnesses. _Or maybe it’s_ them _who’s lonely,_ I consider, recalling that sad low moan my first night here, _and my presence is a comfort to_ them _._ In any case, this bed is far too big – too lush – too _much_ – for just one undersized Seam girl.

I slip from the bed, frowning a little in thought, and pad over to the fireplace, where an new assortment of clothing is warming on the rack for me to choose from. If yesterday’s garments were colored like the woods, the choices today are like dusk and smoke. There’s a beautiful deep red sweater and another in a silvery shade of lilac, an undershirt the color of a storm cloud, a pair of crisp gray trousers, and a knee-length skirt of kitten-soft gray wool, patterned in a muted red-and-purple plaid that would complement either of the sweaters. Alongside the skirt are a thick pair of pearl-gray tights and leggings of a sort of dusty charcoal color, and below are the black buckle shoes and a pair of lavender-gray socks.

My frown deepens. Except for the shoes, not one piece of clothing here is a repeat from yesterday’s offerings. Despite Peeta’s remark about there being more clothes in the dresser, I’d never expected to be given so _much_. Prim and I could dress ourselves for a year with just the clothing I was offered yesterday and today, and something tells me Peeta’s provided far more than I’ve already seen.

I go to the dresser nearest the bed, feeling slightly guilty, and slide open the drawers for a peek. The top drawer, to my surprise, is mostly empty, holding Mom’s camisole and little shorts – Lavinia must have washed them after my shower – Mom and Dad’s precious handkerchiefs, and the underwear I brought from home, all folded neatly and placed with care. The next drawer down is filled with dozens of pairs of socks – long, short, thin, thick, knobby-woven – and tights. The one below it is packed to the brim with sweaters, and the bottom drawer holds trousers and leggings. While there’s a wide array of colors and styles, all of the garments are subtle, natural – _comfortable_ – shades. Nothing is bright or garish – nothing out of character for dark, silent Katniss Everdeen to wear.

And what’s more, the clothing I brought from home has pride of place in each drawer. Dad’s worn sweaters – and Prims’s tiny yellow one – are folded atop their Merchant-quality counterparts, as are my faded trousers and socks, and my scuffed school shoes have been set to one side of the dresser, awaiting use.

I wonder suddenly what became of Dad’s thermals and go around the bed to the far dresser. Its top drawer contains

five or six long-sleeved undershirts along with those threadbare thermals, and the second holds the softest, most beautiful nightclothes I’ve ever seen. Nightgowns, mostly, though I note a few shirt-and-trouser combinations too, all in a blossoming garden of patterns and hues, and several boast little trimmings of colorful embroidery, ribbons, or lace.

My breath catches at the sight and my cheeks grow warm. Peeta bought me nightgowns… _pretty_ nightgowns. Pretty, startlingly feminine things to wear – over my bare skin – as I sleep. My cheeks flare hotter and I quickly close the drawer.

Even when Dad was alive, pajamas were an unnecessary indulgence. As soon as I outgrew my baby clothes, I slept in thermals. _You’ll be just as warm in long-handles and a pair of stout socks,_ Dad would remind me, time and time again. _And just think if there was a fire! –_ a genuine fear in the Seam; whole rows of houses might be wiped out in an hour by one stray spark – _While everyone else scrambles for their trousers, you can step into your boots and run straight out, snug as a bug._

Prim, of course, grew into my childhood thermals, and I grew into Dad’s. On warm nights we slept in our underthings or clothes that were too worn to wear for school any longer. Only Mom had pretty nightclothes, and she didn’t wear them often.  On those nights she unplaited her hair, even as she braided Prim’s and mine more neatly, and splashed at her neck and wrists with floral water – lavender or chamomile or, most often, her beloved sweet cicely. She seemed just like a princess in one of Dad’s old tales as she bent over Prim’s and my tiny bunk in the bedroom we all shared, her long silky hair brushing my face and her skin smelling sweetly of fragrant herbs.

Those were the nights where murmurs turned to gasps and muted whimpers and the creaky protests of bedsprings, and the mornings that followed saw my mother rising early and dreamlike, sunlight dancing off her tangled fair hair and milk-white skin. She hummed softly on those mornings as she reached beneath the blankets or over the bedside to retrieve her nightgown. Sometimes she kissed Dad awake, her pale form luminous as candle-glow beside his olive skin and coal-black hair. Most of the time he sleepily returned the kiss, or tugged her down for even more kisses. Once, he pressed a languid kiss to the rosy tip of her bare breast, and I hid my face in the pillow for many nights afterward, thoroughly mortified.

I think I was eight at the time, and Prim an oblivious slugabed of four, huddled tightly against my back with all the coziness of a warm boulder. I knew Mom and Dad were affectionate and very much in love, but they sometimes did the most bizarre things, especially in those unguarded moments of sunrise. It was several months after Dad died when I finally learned about sex in school, and much later still before I connected it with the moans and pants and rapid, rhythmic squeaking of springs that had come from my parents’ bed. I still didn’t understand it, but I knew that was what they had been doing.

Mom wore her prettiest nightgown almost ceaselessly, night and day, after Dad died. She sat on their bed, feet tucked beneath her, running a comb through her lank hair over and over again. Sometimes she even put on her floral water, her unseeing eyes fixed on the empty place beside her. I remember wondering if it would bring Dad back, all those sweet special things she did just for him, but always I woke to find her alone, her arms wrapped around his pillow and her face buried in its scent.

Shrugging off the memories – and the slight stinging in my eyes – I try the third drawer and find it half-full of skirts. Some are long, like the green plaid one I was offered yesterday, but most appear to be around knee-length, like the one from today’s selections. I suppose I should have guessed after seeing all the tights; still, I can’t help but shake my head. I never, _ever_ wear skirts, except on Reaping Day, and this past summer, of course, I wore Mom’s blue dress.

I crouch down to slide open the last drawer and find, more peculiarly still, a few neatly folded dresses. Mom’s leaf green one is at the top, of course, and the others – forest green, deep blue, dove gray, and a dusty shade of rose – are plain and very simply cut.

I wonder suddenly if I’m meant to look pretty; if that’s the reasoning behind the clothes that fill this dresser. Why else would Peeta buy me such things? _Does he_ want _to see me in a skirt?_ I ask myself. _To see my legs?_

I laugh at my own foolishness and close the drawer, straightening from my crouch. My legs are spindly as a doe’s this winter – without the muscular bulk of its strong flanks, of course – and downy as a baby bird. Peeta will have no interest in them, nor any other part of my scrawny body. The skirts and dresses were probably provided as a courtesy, nothing more.

I return to the clothes on the warming rack and find myself, for the first time in my life, uncertain about what to wear. The silvery lilac sweater reminds me of shadows on snow, but the red one is as deep and saturated in hue as ripe currants. And yet, it’s a quiet color. I can hide in it. The lilac is subtle, but there’s a slight shimmer to the weave; the firelight winks off tiny silvery threads, catching the eye. 

I hold the red sweater up to me in front of the mirror, and for a split second I see what Madge claimed when she brought me the clothes just…two days ago? My eyes look darker, my features striking, my skin almost… _radiant._ With my hair still in its loose braid, soft around my face, I look like someone else entirely. A woman – not a gaunt, scowling child – with solemn smoky eyes and a complexion like strong, creamy tea. For some reason, the realization makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I debate my clothing choices for another minute or two before finally settling on what I knew I’d choose all along: the red sweater and gray trousers. I rebraid my still-sleek hair, though not as tightly as usual, and tell myself it feels better this way.

I dip briefly into the bathroom before heading downstairs and find myself hesitating in front of the cave shower. The glass doors are open, the floor and rock walls beaded with water, and the scent of Peeta – not merely of his soap, but of his body; the bright, warm musk of _boy_ – lingers in the enclosed space. Unbidden, my eyes drift over the bench at the back of the cave and I quickly turn away, my cheeks warming.

I’m unprepared for the sensory aspect of living with a man, let alone sharing something as intimate as a bathroom with one. I’ve spent very little of my sixteen years around a male of any age, except for my father, and the way he smelled, looked, and felt was simply _Dad_. And there’s something almost sexless about Gale, with his feline build, swift reflexes, and silent tread. As though he’s first and foremost an animal, a skillful predator and scavenger; a human second, and male last of all. I feel the same way about myself, really. My gender is incidental; meaningless in terms of survival. Gale and I are like halves of some strange dark whole, like twin fox kits or a pair of rangy young lynxes.

In contrast, Peeta is solidly human and anything _but_ sexless. Where Gale could be my brother, with his shadowy coloring and lean physique, Peeta’s the complete opposite of me: fair and stocky and muscular, with strong, gentle hands and – I recall with an odd little tremor – impossibly warm skin. Where Gale smells of crisp air and coal fires, Peeta smells of bread and cakes and that heady golden soap, the scent of which still lingers on my own skin. He’s so broad and blond and radiantly _male_ that I feel delicate and feminine – uncomfortably so – in comparison.

I slip out of the bathroom, shaking my head, and tell myself it’s just the novelty of sharing this huge, quiet house with a Merchant boy. I’ll get used to how Peeta smells and feels – how a room feels after he’s left it – soon enough, and I won’t notice it anymore. Or dream about it.

As I did yesterday, I smell breakfast on my way downstairs, and while my stomach gives an instinctive, hopeful tug, my reaction is much less desperate today. I wonder whether that’s good or bad; if I’m expecting too much from Peeta – unlikely, considering how eager he was to feed me yesterday – or if I’ve grown soft after just one day of rich food. I smell cured meat again, though not sausage; griddle cakes, or something like them; and berries, simmering and extra sweet. My steps quicken in pace.

I arrive at the kitchen doorway to find Peeta setting the table and whistling cheerfully. He’s wearing a sweater the brilliant blue of morning-glories today; it turns his hair the white-gold of dry winter grasses and his pale skin almost translucent. I wonder what it does to his eyes.

His sleeves are pushed to his elbows again, his district token – the red scrap of cloth – still tied at his left wrist, and there’s a batter-stained towel tucked into the waistband of his trousers, just below the splash of flour at his midsection. He looks mussed and cozy and oddly…fatherlike. As though there should be curly heads peeping up in the chairs and small chubby fists pounding the table with an endearing impatience for _Food, Papa! Now!_

He hasn’t seen me yet, and I feel a bizarre compulsion to slip behind him and curl my arms around his waist. My dad used to do that to my mom when she was at the sink or the stove, her hands busy with something or other, and press a kiss to her neck or her cheek. Sometimes she gave a squawk of surprise or a laugh, depending on how stealthy he was, and at other times she leaned back against him with a happy sigh. I wonder what Peeta would do if I surprised him with a playful hug and kiss.

“Good morning,” I blurt, my cheeks flushing at the direction of my thoughts.

Peeta looks up in surprise. “Good morning, Katniss,” he says, and his smile falters for just a moment. I wonder if he’s only pretending to be happy to see me – most likely – or if, by some strange chance, he saw for that moment what I saw in the mirror a few minutes ago: an older Katniss, softer and feminine. If so, he liked her about as much as I did. I tug the end of my loose braid subconsciously and avoid his eyes. They’re forget-me-not blue this morning, bright yet soft, and my face grows even hotter beneath their gaze.

“I made Prim some shortbread,” he says, and I’m forced to look up as he comes over to hand me a small parcel. It’s about the size and weight of a brick and still warm. The frosted white paper wrap has my sister’s name on it, not written put _painted_ with delicate precision, surrounded by sunny yellow primrose flowers. “I thought Lavinia could take it with your letter when she goes to town today,” he adds. “A little present for her, from here. 

It’s the perfect gift. Prim will cry just at the wrap; she’ll open it carefully and trim around the piece with her name, then press it between schoolbooks and save it forever. And the shortbread she’ll break into dozens of tiny pieces and share with absolutely everyone, only taking some for herself at the end. One brick of shortbread will make Prim happy for no less than a year.

And yet the idea of it fills me with an angry sort of embarrassment…because it’s not a gift from me; it’s yet another from _Peeta_. Peeta, who’s already given her a coat and boots and peppermints and a sleigh ride, to say nothing of food and coal and a promised new house. What had I been thinking, to send Prim a present? Anything – _everything_ – I give her now will come from Peeta. Even a pinecone from the woods would technically be his. His house, his land, his woods. I’d never have come to this place if not for him, and nothing I give Prim from here can ever truly be from me.

My thoughts must show on my face, because when I look up from the parcel, Peeta’s cheerful expression is crestfallen. “It’s…not right, is it?” he says. “Not what you wanted. I thought – since you liked the shortbread so much – but I can make something else –”

“No,” I interrupt him, too sharply, and feel my face, throat, and chest mottle with furious color.

“I don’t mind,” he says gently. “Not at all. Is that what’s bothering you? I’ll make anything you want and we can send it to her. The shortbread was just an idea.”

This only makes me feel worse. “It’s _fine_ ,” I croak and look away, my flushed skin painfully hot.

“No, it’s not,” he says, but so kindly that I feel a stupid urge to cry. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

I look up, scowling to cover the tremor in my lip, and feel my anger dissipate at the sight of Peeta’s sad, gentle face. For one cynical moment I tell myself that this is how he won his Games: by being so ridiculously kind that even a raging Career melted at one look. “It’s not from me,” I tell him crossly.

He shakes his head, smiling a little. “Katniss, I told you yesterday,” he says patiently. “Everything in this house belongs to you. If you want Prim to have shortbread, it’s a gift from you, just as if you bought it from the bakery.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I counter, frowning.

“It _does_ , actually,” he says, his smile growing wider. “Do you want Prim to have shortbread? Do you think she’d like it?”

I think of my tiny sister, taking mouse-like nibbles of the treat she won’t be able to believe is entirely hers. Crumbly, buttery, famous Mellark’s shortbread. “She’ll love it,” I admit. “But –”

“Well, that’s a coincidence,” Peeta says, grinning now, and he sets a hand on the little parcel, his strong fingers brushing mine in the process. “I just made this batch of shortbread. We’ll send it to her.”

His grin is triumphant but his eyes are wary, hopeful even, waiting for me to concede, and I realize that if what he says is true – if, by some absurd twist, this house and its contents truly belong to _me_ , not to Peeta – then the shortbread _is_ a gift from me, just as a pinecone would have been from him. I don’t like it – it’s contrary to everything I know about trading and serves to remind me yet again of how staggeringly high my debt to him already is – but it’s clear that he’s not going to back down. He’s determined to be generous, and if I can just overlook my stupid pride for a moment, I’ll see that I’m standing in the way of Prim getting something wonderful. Which was the whole point of our bargain, after all.

“Okay,” I sigh. “Let’s send her the shortbread.”

Peeta beams at me, as though that one reluctant _yes_ has reaffirmed his whole existence. “Thank you, Katniss,” he says, and ushers me into the chair I sat in yesterday. “Can I have breakfast with you?” he asks.

“You’re baking for my sister; I suppose you can do whatever you want,” I answer shortly, but without any real malice. “And you don’t have to ask. It’s…I mean, _I_ should be asking _you_ , not the other way around.”

“Not if it’s your house,” he says, his eyes glinting merrily.

Once again, he prepares me a plate heaped with decadent foods, first and foremost among them tender slices of ham. I’ve seen ham at the butcher’s, of course, but never had the pleasure of tasting it, and the robust combination of salty-smoky-sweet almost brings tears to my eyes. Next is something like griddle cakes, only they’re very thin and served rolled up, filled with sweet creamy cheeses and drenched with warm blackberries in syrup. A single rich bite makes me groan with pleasure.

There are no eggs today, but Peeta’s hardly stinted with the menu. At the center of the table is a hearty loaf of brown bread, bursting with seeds and wheat berries, and a pot of golden honey butter – a specialty from the creamery. Greta, the daughter, used to buy my wild honey expressly for that purpose, and one time she included a tiny pot of it with my payment. It made even tessera bread delicious. I slather it eagerly over Peeta’s fresh bread, to the sound of his delighted laughter.

I choose tea today, a smoky golden brew, and Peeta serves it to me, to my surprise, in my battered little mug from home. He or Lavinia must have brought it down from my room and made it a place in the cupboard, as they did with my clothing in the dressers. It doesn’t fit at this table of handsome, pine-bedecked dishes and bountiful portions of heady food, but I suppose _I_ don’t either. And seeing it tucked among Peeta’s fine things is a bit like seeing Dad’s hunting jacket hanging next to Peeta’s bearskin. It belongs here, somehow…so maybe I do too.

“Why is Lavinia going to town?” I ask after a little. It’s none of my business, and yet I’m curious. Peeta was in town the day before yesterday to collect me and returned with a sleigh laden with parcels. I can’t think what business he would have back in the district so soon.

“We need eggs,” he says with a straight face. “And milk. These Capitol crepes take a lot.”

I chuckle in spite of myself. “You need chickens and a goat,” I tell him.

“I might at that,” he concedes, grinning. “Anyway: Lavinia’s picking up a few things, but this trip is more for your family. I wasn’t able to spend much time in their new house before we left, so she’s going to spruce up the place before they get there.”

It’s Monday, I realize: Mom and Prim are going to visit their new home after school today. I recall everything I’ve heard of it so far – Marko’s comment about being neighbors; Peeta’s hints about it being “a short walk” from the bakery, maybe even on the square – and try to guess at where, and what, it will be.

“It’s not an especially large place,” Peeta tells me, though there’s a mischievous light in his eyes, “but I think it’ll suit them very well.”

Lavinia comes in then, and I very nearly don’t recognize her. She’s wearing a thick, heartily woven sweater of dark blue with a leather bag slung across her chest, canvas trousers, stout boots, and a little gray cap, with all but a few wisps of her red hair tucked inside. She looks like a boy – and at the same time, utterly adorable. Men will fall over their feet to help her out when she gets to town, Merchant and Seam alike.

An odd impulse makes me glance over at Peeta to see his reaction to her. He’s smiling, but he doesn’t seem enamored in the least, and I can’t think why that would make me feel relieved. “Lavinia, would you deliver this to Katniss’s sister to when you go to town today?” he asks, holding up the wrapped shortbread. “And Katniss has a letter too.”

Lavinia brings her elegant white hands together and mimes reading a book, then raises her brows at Peeta. “At school?” he says. “That should be fine. Katniss?”

I envision Prim in class, receiving a pretty package of shortbread and a letter from me. The surprise will make her day, especially with her already anticipating the visit to their new house. She’ll either dance with delight or burst into happy tears. “Sure,” I tell him. “Bringing it to school will be fine. I’ll go grab the letter.”

I jog upstairs and retrieve the thick envelope from the desk – _my_ desk, in my very own room; a notion which still astonishes me. I’m only gone for a minute or two, but when I return to the kitchen, Peeta abruptly stops talking to Lavinia and looks oddly…guilty. I caught the words “those sorts of colors” as I walked in, which hardly seems incriminating, and Lavinia’s expression gives nothing away as she folds and pockets the scrap of paper that they’d appeared to be looking at. She takes Prim’s letter with a small smile then gestures to me, questioningly, with one cupped hand. I shake my head in puzzlement.

“She wants to know if you want anything,” Peeta says, getting up from the table to hand Lavinia the wrapped shortbread. She tucks it and Prim’s letter securely into her leather bag. “They don’t go to town too often,” he explains. “Once a week, usually, so if you want something – _anything_ – just say so.”

I _don’t_ , and that’s the strangest thing of all. Even if I had the nerve, there’s nothing I can think to ask for. I have a cozy room full of warm clothes, beautiful new boots and that breathtaking coat, half a dozen products for bathing, more food than I could eat in a lifetime…I may be a servant here, but Peeta’s wrapped me in luxury. Not only is there nothing I _need_ ; I can’t think of a single thing I _want_.

“I’m fine,” I tell them both. “I have more than enough of everything.”

Lavinia smiles and gives me an approving little bob of the head. On some level, it feels like I’ve impressed her.

“Have you got everything?” Peeta asks her. “Pollux loaded the sleigh?”

She grins and nods, gesturing toward the front of the house, and I cross to peek out the kitchen window. Little Rye and the sleigh are waiting at the foot of the stone steps, and Pollux is there too, heavily bundled, checking over the harness and the sleigh’s contents. There’s a large flat parcel leaning against the seat, and I spy firewood heaped up in the rear compartment.

For one foolish moment I wonder if Peeta’s sending the firewood to town to sell – after all, there’s a small house’s worth of timber stacked behind the stable, and Peacekeepers will pay a small fortune for even a few logs – and then I realize it’s for my family, or Peeta’s, or maybe both of them. Sweet, clean-burning wood to fuel their fires. Peeta’s not taking from the district but giving back – taking care of people who can never even begin to repay him. I look down at my fine new clothes and wonder why that should surprise me.

Lavinia leaves, and Peeta and I finish our breakfast in companionable silence. I offer to clean up afterwards or at least start the dishes, but Peeta refuses, albeit kindly as ever. “I told you: I’m happy to do it,” he assures me, taking the plate from my stubborn hands. “And I thought you might like to explore the woods today.”

“You’d let me do that?” I ask in surprise. I’d assumed there was some sort of condition built into our bargain; I had to stay within sight of the house, or something like that.

Peeta looks strangely sad at the question. “Of course,” he says. “I know you’re happiest in the woods. It’s…well, part of the reason I wanted you to come here. To live in the woods.”

I’d wondered at this, but hearing it from Peeta reminds me once more how very well he seems to know me. And yet…it’s more than that. Not only does he _know_ things about me – anyone might, and use them against me; they’re weaknesses, really – but he _cares_. He knows what I like and has surrounded me with it. He knows when I want something – before _I_ do, even – and provides it for me.

And it makes no sense whatsoever. Peeta’s not a friend of mine, so why would he know so much about me? And I’m a servant; he hired me – _bought_ me, really. Why should it matter to him what I like, let alone _want_?

“Oh,” I say at last. “Um…thank you. I’d love to look around the woods for a little – if you don’t have something else for me to do?”

It’s starting to niggle, the fact that he hasn’t assigned me any chores and appears in no hurry to do so. And from what I’ve seen so far, the house and grounds are very well-tended, so it’s not like anything is lacking. But Lavinia’s going to town today, so there must be tasks of hers that need doing?

“I want you to be happy and comfortable,” Peeta answers simply, smiling now, “and enjoy yourself. If you’d rather stay in, or skate, or – do anything else – feel free. The day is yours.”

It’s another day off, then. Unexpected, but not to be scoffed at. Skating is a tempting prospect, but I’ve never been to the woods on this side of the lake. Never been half this far from town. “I’d like to see the woods,” I admit.

“Would you take Pollux with you, then?” he asks. “Just for today.”

He winces even before I bristle – he must know I prefer to be on my own in the woods, or with someone whose presence complements mine, like Gale – and adds quickly, “I just thought – till you get familiar with our part of the woods – he could help look out for you.”

“Do I need looking out for?” I challenge.

Peeta chuckles, and I realize what a picture I must make. A small girl, slight as a shadow, fiercely asserting to a stocky, powerful young man that she’ll take on an entirely new forest in the dead of winter without help or a guide of any kind. I’m like a little kitchen cat – and a scrawny one at that – facing off with a mountain lion, telling him she’ll nose her way through his territory with nary a worry, thank you very much. Even Dad would have shaken his head at me and wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.

“Probably not,” Peeta says. “But I’d feel better, just the same.”

This unexpected confidence in my abilities, feigned or otherwise, softens me toward his suggestion. Pollux isn’t so bad, really. He’s funny and friendly and broadly built, maybe as strong as Peeta. It might not be so bad to have someone like that along. And honestly, Peeta’s giving me the day off to play in the woods. How can I object to a request that he’s probably only made for my benefit?

“Okay,” I concede, for the second time this morning. “I’ll take Pollux.”

Peeta sighs. “Thanks, Katniss,” he says, and his lips twist in a crooked grin. “Between you and me, he’ll be glad of the company.”

As I bundle up in the mudroom, I think about what Peeta said. I imagine an Avox’s life is a lonely, quiet one, and Pollux must spend most of his time in or near the stable with Rye as a constant companion. I remember how eager he was to “talk” with me, to interact, even start a snowball fight. I’m not accustomed to having friends, let alone male ones, but Pollux can certainly out-silence even taciturn Gale. I chuckle at the thought. Unless Pollux walks heavily, he’s unlikely to frighten away game, and he’s big enough to ward off smaller predators who might see a scrawny girl as easy prey.

 _Only I’m not hunting,_ I remind myself as I take the snow-path to the stable, abruptly aware of my bowless hands and the absence of the arrow-sheath’s comforting weight between my shoulder blades. I don’t know if Peeta wants me to or will even allow it. He knows I hunt, of course, and that I brought my bow with me, but I have no idea where he’s put it, or if I’ll ever get it back.

Pollux is at the back of the stable, sharpening the axe, when I arrive – he must have chopped the firewood into smaller chunks to fit more into the sleigh – and he smiles at me, tossing the whetstone onto the workbench to give me a little wave. He’s dressed almost identically to Lavinia today: coatless, owing to the pleasant warmth of the stable, he wears a heavy gray sweater, rough canvas trousers and work boots, and a stocking cap tugged down over his sandy hair. He’s less burly without his thick coat, but not much. I suspect he could give any of the Mellarks a run for their money.

“Peeta said I could check out the woods today but he wants you to come with,” I say without preamble. “Is that okay?”

He grins, nodding, and directs me to a cupboard near the workbench that I’d missed yesterday. It holds two pairs of vaguely fish-shaped netted frames, about as long as my arm – snowshoes, I realize. Dad had a pair, ages ago – he used to hold me by the hands and let me step on his feet as we trekked through deep snow – but they’d been lost, probably tucked safely inside a hollow tree somewhere, after he died. I haven’t even thought of snowshoes in years but have to admit they’re a wise idea, especially out here, where snow can easily drift as high as my waist. Pollux helps me strap them on – it’s a peculiar sensation; I feel like a duck with my newly wide, flat feet – before fastening on his own, then he tugs on and buttons up his parka and shoulders the freshly sharpened axe.

I tense in spite of myself. Burly Pollux doesn’t frighten me in the least. Armed Pollux, however jovial and good-natured, reminds me too much of a District Seven tribute or two I’ve seen over the years, and the slight girls who followed them into the woods never came out again. A human trunk and limbs are far more fragile than a tree’s, and probably easier to sever when it’s their life or your own.

But Peeta’s a Victor. He must have at least _some_ of the healthy distrust that comes with outlasting twenty-three other people. And surely the boy who bought me two dressers full of clothes, to say nothing of the stunning coat that encases my small body at this very moment, wouldn’t insist on sending me into the woods with a man who would promptly kill me…would he? “Is that for lunch,” I jest warily, motioning toward the blade resting against Pollux’s shoulder, “or to keep me in line?”

He rolls his eyes and sets aside the axe as casually as if it were a broom, then tugs out his slate and chalk and writes: _PROTECT YOU , SILLY._

I’ve never been called “silly” by anyone but Prim, and certainly not by a grown man. But I suppose my fears _are_ a little ridiculous. If Pollux really wanted to kill me, he could have done so yesterday – with ease – while we were alone in the stable. Not to mention, a man as in debt as he is to Peeta would hardly kill the girl that Peeta went to costly lengths to obtain. _Especially not after observing that her happiness makes Peeta happy,_ whispers a small voice in my mind. I shrug it off, mildly uncomfortable at the reminder.

“Thank you,” I tell him honestly. A strong man with an axe is a priceless asset in a strange forest, though I can’t help wondering whether the weapon was Pollux’s own idea or Peeta previously told him to bring it, anticipating an occasion like this. After all, I hadn’t said a word about “looking out for” me in the woods, yet Pollux had picked up the axe like it was the logical next step. “You want to lead the way?” I ask.

We leave the stable by the back door and are following a snow-path toward the edge of what must be the garden – I’m guessing the route we’re taking into the woods begins on the other side of it – when I see Peeta coming down the back steps of the house, maybe twenty feet away. He’s coatless and carrying a flat baking pan, on which I spy pieces of bright orange pumpkin rind, eggshells, and apple cores, along with several small items in varying shades of brown. Kitchen scraps, of course, but I can’t think what he’s doing with them out here in the snow.

My family rarely had scraps of any sort – poor as we were, we ate every last bit of food we could salvage, especially after Dad died – and when I _did_ get hold of something with an inedible rind or pulp, it went on Mom’s potted herbs as compost. But it’s the wrong time of year for that; far too early to do his garden any good.

I pause on the path, curious and a little captivated, and watch. Peeta carries the pan into the garden and sets it in the snow, then begins breaking up and scattering the contents. One of the brown things looks to be the heel of yesterday’s bread; he crumbles it in his hands and sprinkles it around the pan. It’s like a ritual of some kind, and I’d laugh if it wasn’t so wasteful. I wonder if it’s a result of his Games – a strange mental quirk – or of having more food than he knows what to do with. And then he backs away carefully…and the birds come.

The sparrows – fat, cheerful puffkins of brown and gray, hopping though the snow – are the first to arrive, followed quickly by several blackbirds, a blue jay, a pair of mourning doves, and even, in a startling flash of red, a cardinal. A dozen or more birds descend on the kitchen scraps, chittering eagerly, before Peeta has taken more than a few steps away. It’s almost as though they were waiting –

 _Oh, stupid Katniss. Stupid,_ stupid _Katniss. Of course_ they were waiting. _Because Peeta feeds them._ He feeds wild birds.

My heart stills in my chest as I stare, immobilized, at the scene. I _eat_ birds. Not songbirds, of course, but blackbirds are little different, and there are four of them greedily, happily snapping up Peeta’s breadcrumbs and pecking away at the eggshells. It doesn’t make me _bad_ – almost any wild creature will eat another when it’s starving – but it makes him _good_. Better than anyone I’ve ever met before. Better than I ever imagined anyone could be.

My paralysis breaks in a sudden flood of hot tears and I duck behind a tree, gasping with sobs. How can this stupid Merchant boy make me cry just by _being_? I press a fist to my mouth to stifle the sound, but the wetness from my eyes and nose drips onto the fine soft leather of my new glove, and I can’t – _can’t_ – ruin that beautiful gift from Peeta. I frantically tug off the gloves and shove them into a fur-lined pocket, crying like I haven’t cried since Peeta’s Reaping Day, and rub at my hot face with my bare hands. I don’t care about wiping my runny nose or streaming eyes; I’m just trying to get myself under some kind of control so I can catch up to Pollux.

And then, as if summoned by the thought, Pollux is here, crouched beside the tree where I’m huddled. His blue eyes are sympathetic and free of mocking or judgment as he offers me a crumpled red pocket handkerchief – which, of course, only makes me cry harder.

Because Pollux is yet another example of how incomprehensibly _good_ Peeta is. In what he must have thought were his last days, Peeta took the time to have a conversation – to strike up a friendship – with a mute slave. _He’s funny_ , he told me yesterday. _We ended up passing notes like schoolboys._ And after the Games, when any other person would’ve been thinking of their missing limb, of their relief to be alive and safe and going home, Peeta had fought to take Pollux and Lavinia with him. To save two mutilated young people from a life of servitude to the cruel Capitol. And his generosity hadn’t ended there. One look at their living quarters, their clothing, their faces is sufficient to tell how very well Peeta has taken care of them. He’s provided them with every comfort, including privacy and company in turns, and is obviously well-liked by both of them.

I take Pollux’s handkerchief in both shaky hands and wipe my eyes and cheeks, over and over again, until the tears begin to ebb. Finally I blow my nose, but I don’t pocket the handkerchief just yet. I’m not sure this crippling wave of emotion is quite over.

“Why is he so _good_?” I choke.

I expect Pollux to reach for his slate and write a clever explanation, but instead he gives me a sad smile and rests a hand over his heart. I don’t know Avox shorthand, but I think I understand, and agree with, everything this implies. Heart. Compassion. _Love._ Peeta Mellark may well be the embodiment of these things.

“Even wild birds?” I whisper.

Pollux shrugs. This time he takes out the slate. _Lonely_ , he writes. I wonder if he means Peeta or the birds, and realize it might well apply to both. _Hungry,_ he adds below it, gesturing at the garden, where the birds – twice as many now – are continuing their happy feast.

I think of the eleven-year-old boy who took a blow from his mother so he could feed a starving Seam girl and suspect it took just one shivering sparrow pecking hopefully through his dormant garden to make Peeta decide to feed _every_ bird, or at least as many as he could. And I may well be wrong, but I imagine he deliberately comes out without his bearskin so as not to confuse or frighten them.

Pollux offers a hand and I shift shakily up from my crouch, steadied by his other hand behind my elbow. “I should have gone skating,” I joke feebly, sniffling.

He gives a rumbling, throaty chuckle and retrieves his axe from the snow, then gestures into the woods, raising his brows.

This I can interpret. “Yes,” I say firmly. “Let’s go.”

As comfortable as I am in Peeta’s house – anywhere on his property, really – a feeling of mild euphoria descends as I cross into the woods. The woods was like a parent to me, especially after Dad died; a second father, maybe, nourishing me with its bounty of plants and animals. This isn’t _my_ woods, of course, but it feels like home just the same.

I notice straightaway that Peeta’s woods is glutted with pines, which reassures my old hunger instincts. If all else fails, we’ll always have pine bark. I’ve eaten plenty of it on hollow days – _and so,_ I recall, _has Peeta._ His arena was not unlike these woods. I wonder for the first time how he can bear to live out here, let alone in a house rich with the sights, scents, and textures of the woods. He could have had one of the neat white houses in the Victor’s Village and made it every bit as luxurious, maybe more so. Why did he choose this remote place, so far from his family and friends?

But I have little time to contemplate this, because just then my eyes light on what might be a stand of sugar maples. I approach one, duck-like in my snowshoes, and contemplate the bark: rough and furrowed, patterned in uneven vertical strips that look like you could peel them off with ease. I step back from the trunk and hop up to catch the lowest branch, tugging it down for a closer look. The twigs are ruddy brown, the buds conical and almost sharp. I make a sound that might be a squeal and let the branch spring back, narrowly missing Pollux, who has backtracked to see what so fascinated me.

“Maple trees,” I tell him, grinning, as I move on to identify the next ragged trunk. “If we can get hold of a spile, we can tap them in a month or so and make syrup. There’ll be plenty for Peeta to use or sell…” I trail off, my enthusiasm dimming slightly. Peeta doesn’t _need_ to sell or trade. Maple syrup might be liquid gold to me – Dad made his most profitable trades ever on the bucketfuls we harvested – but to Peeta it’s probably just a novelty.

A pleasant novelty, I hope. Dad’s spiles, like his snowshoes, were lost when he died, and I imagine no one in the district has had wild-harvested maple syrup since. I think of introducing Peeta to “sugar snow,” of the wonder that might appear on his face at the first taste, and a curious, happy warmth kindles in my stomach. I can’t think why I would want to share such a humble pleasure with Peeta, nor why his reaction should matter so much to me.

As we continue deeper into the woods, I anticipate and carefully examine all evidence of animals, be it tracks or scat, fallen feathers or damaged bark, and am startled by the apparent lack of predators. There will be owls, of course – there’s a bounty of rabbits, squirrels, even mice for them to feed on – but beyond that, meat eaters are noticeably absent. Either they’re hibernating, or they simply don’t inhabit this area. I see soft clusters of rabbit prints, the three-toed indents of wild turkeys, even – I dance inwardly at the thought – the split-hooved tracks of several deer, but not a single paw print breaks the snow. No wild dog, no lynx, no cougar…in light of the rich availability of prey, is it possible? Has nature allotted Peeta some kind of haven here? Or have they been frightened off by the scent and sight of a more formidable predator – the lingering presence of _bear_ in Peeta’s coat?

“No predators?” I ask Pollux, frowning. “Dogs? Big cats?” I mime a lynx, with its tufted ears.

He chuckles and shakes his head.

“Wolverines?” I whisper. I haven’t thought of this till now, and the possibility of one or more living so close to Peeta chills my skin with a combination of fear and fury. I remember too well the sight of that pointed muzzle clamped around Peeta’s leg, the tearing jerk of its head, the rush of bright blood on snow and sweet, gentle Peeta’s piercing screams of pain. I had screamed then too, bunching our tattered old quilt to my mouth to muffle the sound.

I want to go back to the house so badly that for a moment I can’t breathe. I need to make sure Peeta’s safe, and protect him if he’s not. I’m shaking and very cold; I feel like I might vomit or faint. His name pulses at my temples, drums in my throat. _Peeta Peeta Peeta._ The wolverine killed his last ally, the red-haired girl from Four. It went for her first – the weaker of the two; an easy target – and it was Peeta trying to help that cost him his leg. Her last act – fueled by raw adrenaline; she was near bloodless by then – was pushing the branch within reach of his hand. The heavy limb that he used to club the wolverine to death.

Peeta bent over the girl at the end, his leg soaked with crimson and steaming in the bitter cold as he lay beside her. He traced her blue lips with a shaking hand as she gasped out her last words. _Peeta…needs to be you…go home…too much love to die…_

I abruptly come back to myself and realize I’m crouched over my snowshoed feet, trembling hard. Pollux is cautiously rubbing my back, his axe discarded and his face very worried. “I’m okay,” I croak. “Just bad memories.”

He nods, his eyes suddenly haunted, and I remember that this former Capitol slave has a much worse past to draw nightmares from. I feel weak for my behavior, but the memory struck so swift, hard and deep. “The w-wolverine,” I explain, choking a little on the word. “From Peeta’s Games.” I feel a renewed urgency to get back to the house and try to stand, but my legs wobble and give at the attempt and I fall back against Pollux.

To my surprise, he doesn’t laugh at my clumsiness but curls a supportive arm around my shoulders, bracing me, then reaches with his other hand to write something in the snow in front of us: _NONE HERE._

“Are you _sure_?” I whisper, hugging my knees.

He picks up the axe one-handed and lays it over the words. _IF THERE WERE,_ he writes next to the handle, then raises fierce eyes to mine.

And I understand, I think. Though I’ve yet to see them interact, it’s plain as day that Pollux is devoted to Peeta, with the kind of unflinching loyalty that the Capitol tries to bribe and force from all of us. I suspect there’s very little he wouldn’t do for the boy who saved him from a life of slavery, who brought him to this quiet, beautiful place and gave him freedom and comfort, fulfilling work and a living space all his own. He’d kill every wolverine in Panem if that’s what it took to protect his young master.

 _And so would you,_ whispers a voice in my head, but I push it aside. What Pollux is expressing is a something I don’t quite understand and can’t always identify, and yet it’s oddly clear to me right now. It’s exactly how I feel for Prim, and the reason I agreed to Peeta’s bargain. “You love him,” I say.

Pollux holds my gaze for a very long moment, then leans forward to dust out his previous words and write three more: _SO DO YOU._

My breath leaves me in a funny little rush. I can’t think how to reply, and Pollux isn’t looking at me, which somehow makes it worse. He means, of course, that I feel for Peeta like he does – a combination of gratitude and loyalty and protectiveness – and yet it doesn’t sound like that. Not written in the snow of Peeta’s woods, with fear and grief for him still sending tremors through my body.

“No, I don’t,” I manage at last, and lean forward to wipe out those unsettling words, but Pollux stops me, his gloved hand closing over mine. He does look at me then, his eyes no longer fierce but solemn, and shakes his head slowly. He helps me to my feet, shoulders the axe once more, and we move on, leaving his strange message in the snow for all the woods to see.

We walk for another half hour through the seemingly endless forest before I announce that it’s getting near lunchtime and we should head back. In reality, I can’t bear to take another step _away._ I’ve enjoyed far too much leisure time already, and I still feel the lingering unease for Peeta’s safety that’s tugged at me since the memory of the wolverine. But of course, I tell Pollux none of this as we make our way back toward the house. I don’t pause to study trees or animal signs this time, and we reach the garden in a little under an hour.

There are a few persistent sparrows still pecking around Peeta’s tray for crumbs and two quarrelsome blackbirds fighting over a hollowed piece of pumpkin shell, but that’s not what captures my attention. Peeta is sitting on the back steps, still coatless, with a chipmunk perched on his knee, eagerly taking tidbits from his open hand.

For a very long moment I wonder if I’m going mad. I first learned stillness in the woods by watching Dad tame a chipmunk to eat from his hand. The scene itself is not unfamiliar, but the participants are. Peeta may be a Victor, but he’s still a Merchant boy, whose experiences with animals are limited to house pets and food. How can he _possibly_ know how to win the trust of a wild creature? It requires endless patience and gentleness; soft words, careful movements, and plenty of food.

As I come closer, my mind’s eye melds this moment with my memory of Dad. Peeta sits beside a black-haired little girl, cupping both of her small hands in one of his and steadying them for the chipmunk. Curious, it climbs from his knee onto their nested hands and begins greedily stuffing its cheek pouches with the seeds the child holds. She gives a squeak of delight and grins up at Peeta. Her eyes are blue.

My gasp dissolves the vision and startles the chipmunk. It scurries down Peeta’s leg and vanishes over the side of the steps, but Peeta looks anything but disappointed. “Hey, Katniss,” he says, smiling widely up at me. “This little guy smelled your lunch, I think.” He peers over the steps, grinning, and dusts the crumbs from his hand in the direction the chipmunk went. “I opened the window while I was baking, just a crack, and I found him sniffing around out here.”

“How on earth did you tame a chipmunk?” I blurt.

Behind me, Pollux gives a rumbling laugh and Peeta shakes his head in reply, chuckling himself. “It’s pathetic,” he admits. “I was eating lunch in the garden this summer –” he gestures at the bench beneath the arch of the trellis – “and I…well, I’d hadn’t been sleeping much then, and…I fell asleep” he says sheepishly. “And I woke up to the chipmunk on the bench beside me. I’d fallen asleep with a piece of bread in my hand, and he was being sneaky, taking it from me a nibble at a time, but he was stuffing it all into his cheeks, and his whiskers tickled my hand every time he took a bite.” He laughs. “That’s what woke me up, actually. I looked down and saw this striped thing hovering over my hand, and I screamed. I honestly thought it was some kind of little mutt-snake. I threw down my food and ran into the house.”

Pollux is laughing outright now, and I can’t resist smiling myself at the mental image of stocky, powerful Peeta being terrified by a friendly chipmunk. “Long story short, the chipmunk got most of my lunch that day, which was what he wanted,” Peeta says, grinning. “And I figured it out quickly enough and tried to see if I could get him to come back when I was awake. It took a little while, but we’re friends now. I usually feed him a few times a week.”

“And the birds?” I ask quietly.

“Every day,” he answers, his voice very soft and his cheeks growing pink. “I, um…I tried not to befriend anything I thought you might hunt.”

It barely registers that he plans to allow me to hunt – _expects_ me to do it, even. Animals are not befriended overnight, or even over a short span of days. Peeta’s guided his actions for some time in anticipation of me hunting in his woods. But all I can think, even now, is that this impossibly _good_ boy shares his bounty with wild creatures while I kill them for food.

“Is that okay?” he asks.

I look away, my eyes burning. Peeta Mellark is asking my permission to be kind. “Of course,” I rasp. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to hunt again.

Pollux takes my snowshoes and returns to his loft for lunch, and Peeta and I go into the house. He helps me out of my coat and wrappings in the mudroom, then retrieves my warmed slippers from the living room. I realize that, with Lavinia away for the day, he will have been the one to put them in front of the fire.

He doesn’t offer to help me off with my boots and I don’t ask. I imagine he’s embarrassed by the memory of what happened last time. I perch on the low bench as I undo the laces and tug off each boot in turn, then I step into my slippers and follow him into the kitchen.

He’s prepared a full meal today: a buttery soup made of crushed tomatoes and heavy cream, brightened with garlic and basil, and more of his hearty wheat bread, paired with slices of a rich, smoky cheese. It’s the perfect combination after a crisp morning in the woods. More than once I catch myself raising the bowl to my lips – I find I could drink this soup like water; a spoonful at a time is hardly sufficient – but Peeta only smiles and nods encouragement.

When I’ve finished two modest bowlfuls and cleaned up every last drop with my third piece of bread, he gets up to take a plate from the oven: a pile of thick golden brown cookies, marked with a crosshatch pattern on top. I identify their primary ingredient with one sniff and look at him in surprise.

Peanut butter. In District Twelve – or at least, in the Seam – peanut butter is a commodity, a cheap food. It comes on Parcel Day, along with corn syrup and cans of applesauce. More than once I’ve made a spoonful of it into a meal, paired with lots of mint tea and maybe a thin slice of tessera bread. It’s as filling as a boiled egg – maybe more so, with its smooth texture and nutty flavor – and before this moment, I would never have thought of it as anything other than a precious source of protein and nourishing oils. Certainly never as dessert.

I take a hesitant bite of one warm, crumbly cookie and feel my entire body sigh with pleasure. Peeta’s taken this humble food and made it into something rich and beautiful that Merchant kids would pay highly for. It might be even better than his shortbread.

“You like them?” he asks hopefully, and grins. “The chipmunk did.”

“I love them,” I answer around a blissful mouthful of cookie, and reach to the plate for another.

Peeta ladles out two mugs of cider to drink with our cookies, and it tastes even better than yesterday’s cup. I’m getting used to the delicious smells of this house, I think; I hadn’t even noticed the cider on the stove at breakfast.

As we finish our dessert, I’m reminded of the crock Peeta sent up last night as a bedtime snack. The unfamiliar but comforting dish of bread and soft spices that had somehow tasted like home. Lavinia told me to ask him what it was, and this seems as good a time as any. “Peeta, what was that bread thing you made last night?” I ask. “Baked in the crock, with cinnamon and things.”

He smiles at the question, though his bright eyes are suddenly sad. “Bread pudding,” he says. “Did you like it?”

He must know I did, since the crock came back to him empty, cleaned even of residue and crumbs. “It was wonderful,” I tell him. “I’ve never had anything like it, but…it tasted like _home_. Comfortable…a-and safe.” I blush at my ridiculous words, but Peeta’s not laughing. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“It makes complete sense,” he says softly. “That’s what it’s for." 

There’s a story here, I realize, but Peeta’s not volunteering it. He stares down at the tabletop, his brow furrowed, and for a moment he looks like he might cry.

Something squeezes my heart like a massive fist, and I reach across the table to cover Peeta’s hand with mine – or rather, as much of it as I can. He starts a little at the touch and looks up at me, his eyes very wide, but he doesn’t pull away. “You don’t have to say,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “I want to,” he says quietly.

“It started with Marko,” he begins. “He was…really scared for his first Reaping. He could barely eat for days before, and he threw up as soon as he got home afterward. Sorry,” he adds quickly, and I shake my head. I know plenty about Reaping fears and nightmares. I don’t know Peeta’s oldest brother at all, aside from our interactions the day I left, but his reactions aren’t surprising – or uncommon – in the least.

“Anyway, Dad wanted to feed him something to soothe his stomach,” Peeta continues, “but Mom never let us have anything from the bakery unless it was really stale. She was a butcher’s daughter, so, you know: squeeze out every last bit of profit. Fat and bones as much as the meat.”

I didn’t know this – any of it – and my fingers tighten around Peeta’s hand in response. I’d always assumed a baker’s son would have the best and freshest bread and pastries, not the hard, stale things that no one wanted. Peeta’s clearly never starved, but I can’t help wondering if the burned bread he threw to me was fresher than anything he’d ever eaten from the bakery.

“So, Dad cut up a loaf of stale bread and made bread pudding,” he says. “It’s really simple: butter, eggs, milk, cinnamon, vanilla, a little nutmeg – and it’s actually best with stale bread, because it absorbs the flavors better. He made it for Marko, but we each got a couple bites, and I swear it was the best thing I’d ever eaten. Pure comfort, by the spoonful.

“After that, it was the annual post-Reaping meal,” he says. “It meant you were safe. Home. Warm and protected and loved. We had it every year,” he tells me with a weak smile, “except…you know.”

“This year,” I whisper.

He nods, swallowing hard. “But…it was the first thing I had when I got home after the Games. Dad pulled me aside as soon as he could. We hid in a stairwell at the Justice Building and…I cried and ate bread pudding while Dad held onto me and told me over and over again that I was safe and home. Warm and protected and loved.”

Peeta’s eyes are red-rimmed now, and I’m overwhelmed by a desire to hold him, to cradle his face to my chest like a child’s and stroke his hair as I assure him that _yes_ , he’s safe and home, warm and protected – but I can’t. He won’t want that, and it’s not my place. Certainly not what he brought me here for.

So I bring my other hand to his as well and give a fierce, reassuring squeeze. He sniffles a few times, but no tears fall. “Thank you, Katniss,” he whispers. “I’m sorry for –”

“Don’t be,” I tell him before he can say it.

He gives a breathy chuckle. “Okay,” he says with a valiant attempt at a crooked smile. “Anyway…the first night Pollux and Lavinia and I spent here – just the three of us, after all the Capitol people were gone – I made a batch of bread pudding and told them the story. We sat in here – it was a lot different then – and ate our bread pudding around the table and…it was the first time I’d ever seen either of them look truly _happy_. It had been a very long time since either of them had known _safe_ or _home_ ,” he says, looking at once angry and very sad.

“But…” I frown. One part of this doesn’t add up. “Why would you make it for me, then?”

The anger melts from his eyes, leaving only sadness behind. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asks.

I shake my head, my frown deepening.

Peeta hesitates a moment, looking down at our hands on the tabletop. “You did a really brave thing, coming out here,” he says, slowly raising his eyes to mine. “Leaving your family to live with a boy you barely know –”

“I did it for my family,” I interrupt, somehow irked by this.

Peeta shakes his head and laughs gently. “I know, Katniss,” he assures me. “You might be the most selfless person I’ve ever met – and the bravest. But I thought…not knowing much of the situation you’d agreed to, you might be af – uneasy.”

I hide my surprise behind a scowl. Does he know? My terror and tears the first night I was here; my tremors and nausea last night? Did Lavinia tell him how she found me beside the shower, or of my reluctance to eat the food he sent?

_Does he want me?_

I suck in a breath and look anywhere but at Peeta. I’d pull my hands away but they seem to have fused with his; my arms are leaden on the table. This is the first time the thought has come to me when I’m with him. I could ask, here and now, and know for certain – but I _can’t_. Absolutely can’t. My heart is racing and I’m afraid to breathe, let alone speak.

And then I feel his right hand turn beneath my left and close around it, enveloping my very bones in the cradle of his strong fingers and impossibly warm skin. His thumb, slightly callused, strokes the back of my hand, brushing the sensitive patch of skin between my thumb and forefinger, over and over again. “Katniss,” he says, very softly.

I gulp and meet his eyes.

I’ve never seen such kindness in all my life. “You’re _safe_ ,” he murmurs, punctuating the word with a gentle squeeze of my hand. “ _Home_ , if you want to be. Warm and protected and –” He breaks off with a ragged, shuddering sound and brings my hand to his face. His fingers tighten around mine as his lips press the back of my hand.

I gasp. It’s at once less and a hundred times _more_ intimate than him kissing the arches of my feet. That had been brief, almost playful. This is lingering and wholly serious. He doesn’t release my hand or lift his head, and the wet warmth of his mouth triggers a strange heat in my belly.

“I’d never hurt you, Katniss,” he whispers against my knuckles. “Or let anyone else do so. _Ever._ ” He kisses the word into my skin. I shiver, but not with fear, and think of those lips at the nape of my neck.

Almost abruptly, he lowers my hand to the table once more and releases it, his cheeks turning bright and bashful. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just…I don’t want you to be afraid here, of m – of anyone or anything. I’ll make you bread pudding every single day if that’s what it takes,” he adds with a small smile, and I feel an echoing smile tug at the corners of my mouth.

“That would be wonderful – but unnecessary,” I tell him. “I’m okay, really.”

And I _am_. I still don’t understand my purpose or duties here, but Peeta’s actions have affirmed what Lavinia told me last night. _No harm. Will never hurt you._ It’s baked into his breads and cakes and that near-magical pudding, resonant in the touch of his hands and lips – to say nothing of the soft clothes and furnishings he’s provided for me. The most vulnerable animals in these woods trust Peeta Mellark – rely on him, even. I’d be a fool not to do likewise.

I offer to help with the lunch dishes but Peeta demurs yet again. “I’m perfectly happy to do this,” he reminds me as he places the remaining cookies in a ceramic jar gaily patterned with pinecones, red berries, and tiny bird-prints. “You’re free to do whatever you like.”

“But – Lavinia’s gone,” I protest. “I mean…there must be things that need doing?”

Peeta contemplates this for a moment, then grins. “Yes,” he says firmly. “Katniss Everdeen needs to enjoy herself, so thoroughly that she forgets how to scowl.” He takes a cookie back out of the jar and presses it into my hand. “She needs to eat an entire batch of peanut butter cookies and play in the snow. She needs to skate and laugh and throw all the snowballs she likes. Preferably at Pollux,” he adds with a wink. “And then come in, whenever she’s good and ready, for a nice hot supper.”

I shake my head at him, wondering if he has any idea how ridiculous he sounds. _And sweet,_ murmurs the little voice in my head. _He wants you to be full and happy and have fun._ “I suppose I could go outside a _little_ longer,” I admit, biting back a bubble of enthusiasm.

Peeta’s smile could outshine the sun.

He parcels up three more cookies in a cloth napkin, telling me I can share with Pollux “or not,” then he cheerfully begins collecting the dishes, all but shooing me out of the kitchen. I return to the plush warmth of my coat and boots, not ungrateful for the continuing leisure but deeply confused by Peeta’s good-natured reluctance to give me chores. There must be something I can do for him while I’m outside – gather branches or pinecones for the fires; _something._

The thought lasts all of five minutes. Once I’m in my skates and on the lake once more, I’m flying. My legs are a little sore from all the skating yesterday and the falls I took, on top of which I had that long snowshoe trek this morning, but my movements are even swifter and more graceful today. I feel like a sleek little bird; gliding through the frosty air, skimming over the frozen water, secure in my bright red plumage and deep white down.

I skate further out this time, taking in as much of the surrounding woods as I can. The lake is much bigger than I ever dreamed, curving north, far beyond Peeta’s house. I wonder where it ends, and if four people in skates could escape from Panem, once and for all, over its icy surface.

It’s a foolish thought, especially considering that Lavinia’s already tried to escape into the wilderness beyond Twelve – and suffered horribly because of it – and I quickly redirect my thoughts to less seditious things. Peeta should have a boat, come spring, for fishing and trips back to town. I’ve never been in one, but I’ve seen primitive rafts in the Games, and Dad used to talk about pirogues, lightweight boats made from dug-out tree trunks. Grandpa and Grandma Everdeen built one on their Sundays in the woods and even took Dad out in it sometimes, but he was too small to tether it fast by himself, and it was battered to fragments in a particularly violent storm the summer his father died. Dad cried over the pieces – he was just eight at the time, and he’d lost something precious to his parents and a source of food, all at once – but his mother assured him that the broken boat would serve them just as well as firewood in the winter. She ended up in the mines herself after that and never had the time or energy to teach him the craft, so he became adept at fishing from shore and in turn taught those skills to me.

The thought makes me long for fresh fish, roasted to a crisp over an open fire, but I quickly remind myself that whatever Peeta makes for supper will be ten times better. I wonder if he fishes, this Merchant boy who feeds sparrows from his table and thought a chipmunk was a mutt-snake. Maybe in spring I can teach him, or catch and roast fish for him on a little spit in the backyard.

I chuckle at the thought. This boy who smells of bread, whose pale skin is heady with the scents of honey and cream and cloves, will hardly be interested in baiting hooks and gutting fish. He has a freezer full of expensive butcher meat: chicken and sausage and that glorious ham; just the memory of it makes my mouth water. He’ll have no time or taste for small, smoky perch.

I loop back to shore at last, grinning all the while, and manage not to fall over this time after removing my skates. My snowman stands sentinel in the front yard, Peeta’s scarf still wrapped around his “neck,” and I decide he needs a friend. I start out making a child-snowman – a funny little boy, I tell myself, with yellow curls and round rosy cheeks – but it ends up far too tall, a little past shoulder-height on my first snowman.

I haven’t made him a friend; I’ve made him a wife. Something about that makes me strangely sad, and I don’t stay to give her a pebble face and arms. I know what she looks like: soft blonde hair, supple curves, and creamy skin. Perfectly matched to the smiling snowman in a jaunty red scarf beside her, and his cozy house of wood and stone.

Irritable now, I wander back to the stable, thinking to give Pollux the cookies I’d forgotten about, and find him seated on a stool beside the stable stove, looking dejected and a little miserable. I’m not the most sympathetic person in the world, but I know he has much more to feel bad about than me. “You okay?” I ask, proffering the napkin.

He gives a noncommittal nod and takes a cookie. I try not to watch too closely as he eats, but I can’t help but be curious. Pollux can’t taste the cookie, can’t tell texture or temperature; all he can do is chew and circulate the bite with side-to-side movements of his jaw and, I imagine, saliva. He swallows slowly and cautiously, and yet there’s a certain ease about it. I suppose it’s second nature after living without a tongue for more than five years. And it strikes me as bitterly ironic that a man and woman who’ve lost their ability to taste – to enjoy the pleasures of food at all – should be living with the most skillful, generous cook I’ve ever known.

Once he’s finished the cookie, he takes out the slate. _Gone a long time,_ he writes.

The sun _is_ drifting lower, and Lavinia isn’t back yet. Is he worried? Should Peeta be? “Is that bad?” I ask.

He shrugs. _Unusual_ , he writes. _But busy day._ And he gives me a small, mischievous smile.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” I ask without thinking.

He laughs and snatches the second cookie from my hand. _You’d better be happy tonight,_ he writes, grinning up at me. _Or he’ll be really disappointed._

“Happy about what?” I ask suspiciously. I only know about Lavinia going to do some things at Mom and Prim’s new house, and I’m already “happy” about that. Well, as happy as I _can_ be, in light of my immense debt to Peeta over it.

Grinning impishly now, Pollux wipes his slate clean and tucks it away, then spreads his hands in a gesture of wide-eyed innocence: a clear signal that I’ll get no more from him. I give a huff of frustration and stalk out of the stable. I don’t like surprises in general, and where Peeta’s concerned, they tend to be overwhelming and make me cry – in front of other people, no less.

I’m halfway to the house when I feel a hand on my shoulder and whirl around, fists clenched at my sides. I’m in no mood for playing, but Pollux isn’t smiling anymore. _I’m sorry,_ he mouths.

Pollux has never “talked” before, not when he can write. My scowl softens.

He points up to the house, then brings that hand to rest over his heart and points at me with his other hand. It’s like Lavinia’s sign language, but this message is less difficult to translate. The house means _Peeta_ , and the hand-heart gesture is the same one he made for Peeta and the birds. _Care and compassion._ For _me_.

 _Peeta cares for you,_ or more likely, _Peeta takes care of you._ I nod in reply. This much I know, though I don’t understand it.

He gestures at the house again, then at me, then points at his own face, creased in a demonstrative smile. _Peeta, me, happy…?_ I shake my head and he repeats the gestures deliberately. This time he points at me again after indicating the smile.

“Peeta…makes me happy?” I guess, and feel my cheeks warm. That isn’t what I meant at all – I’m just trying to figure out what _he_ means – and Pollux raises a playful brow before shaking his head, chuckling softly. He gestures at the house once more, then throws up his hands and reaches for the slate. _Wants to ,_ he writes. _SO MUCH._

“Wants to…make me happy?” I ask, and he nods emphatically in reply. “Okay,” I venture. “So…whatever Lavinia’s doing in town today…Peeta hopes it’ll make me happy?”

Pollux gives another nod, this one slightly victorious. “Okay,” I say again. I can’t begin to guess what all Peeta has planned for Mom and Prim, but I can’t imagine it would upset me. “If it’s good for my family, I can promise I’ll be happy about it,” I assure him.

 _Thank you,_ he writes, and gives me a last gentle smile before returning to the stable.

I continue to the back of the house but don’t quite feel like going inside yet – Pollux’s hints have my mind running furiously – so I make for the garden trellis instead and brush away enough snow to perch on the edge of the stone bench. I unfold Peeta’s napkin and nibble thoughtfully at the last crumbled cookie.

Peeta knows that I know about the house for my family; it was a large condition of our bargain. Is there something special about it that everyone knows but me? And if so, what can it possibly _be_? Twelve is a plain, poor, grimy little district. Even the nicest Merchant home will be a bare fraction of the size and luxury of Peeta’s house in the woods. The Victor’s Village houses are larger, of course, but even Peeta can’t have _two_ Victor’s Residences – and I doubt he’d put Mom and Prim there anyway, with only filthy, staggering Haymitch as a neighbor.

There’s a soft flutter of wings, very close by, and I look up to see a lone mourning dove, no more than five feet from where I’m sitting, pecking in the snow for forgotten bits of Peeta’s food. I go stock still, even holding my breath.

Animals don’t come near me, except for docile Rye – and Buttercup and Lady, of course. Wild creatures know better; they smell _hunter_ on me. This mourning dove isn’t plump, as it will be come summer, but it would still make a meal for me – and Prim too, if I had a little flour or potatoes to go with it.

But Prim _has_ food now, good Merchant food and plenty of it…and so do I. I’ll have supper within a half-hour, and I’ve got a cookie in my hand to boot. I don’t _need_ to kill this bird.

I remember, all of a sudden, an old folk song Dad used to sing, and I hear myself humming it as I watch the dusky dove peck its way over the snow, ever closer to my booted feet:

 _The snowflakes fall as winter calls and time just seems to fly  
_ _Is it the loneliness in me that makes me want to cry?  
_ _My heart is sad like a mourning dove that’s lost its mate in flight  
_ _Hear the cooing of his lonely heart through the stillness of the night._

Dad loved mourning doves: their soft fawn-colored plumage, their haunting coo, the unique chittering-whistle sound of their wings as they landed or took flight. He made a pet of one the summer he was ten, and it stayed with him and his mother till his first Reaping. He let it go then, thinking it would be better off in the wild if he got Reaped, but it stayed close to the little shack in the woods and shared Dad’s company and lunch for the next five years.

The bird at my feet could well be a descendant of Dad’s beloved pet dove, who shared his tessera bread and rode along on his foraging rambles, perched on his shoulder. I’ll have more food in minutes, but this bird won’t eat till tomorrow. It might not even eat then. Maybe it came late, or the blackbirds drove it away, and by the time it returned to the garden, all of Peeta’s scraps were gone. Maybe that’s why it’s so lean.

Maybe it’s like _me._ Scavenging its way through this brutal winter, and likely to die without the intervention of another creature.

I crumble what remains of Peeta’s last cookie and, with a trembling hand, scatter food onto the snow for a wild bird.

The mourning dove flutters back a little in surprise, making the whistling sound that I can never believe comes from its wings, but it slowly returns, its tiny head cocked, to investigate the cookie crumbs. It pecks at one, almost curiously, then another, then – convinced, it would seem – begins eagerly feasting on the rich golden crumbs at my feet.

Katniss Everdeen just fed a wild bird. I bite my lip, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. If Dad was here, though, I think he’d be pleased.

“Katniss?”

Peeta’s voice is close and gentle, but still I start, and the dove does too, fluttering back across the garden. I look up to see him standing almost beside the bench – how had I not heard him approach? – with an expression on his face that I can’t begin to comprehend. It’s happy and sad and _warm_ , all at once.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, shamed. “I didn’t mean to throw away your food –”

“No,” he says firmly, and comes around to crouch in front of me, taking my gloved hands in his bare ones. He’s coatless yet again, and I wonder how he can bear it. Maybe he _is_ as impossibly warm as he seems to me, and he doesn’t feel the cold. I can feel the radiant heat of his strong hands, even through the leather of my gloves.

“You really _are_ the most selfless person I’ve ever met,” he says, almost in wonder.

“I’m _not_ , you know,” I answer miserably. “The dove made me think of Dad – he used to have one – and I thought maybe it was hungry, so –”

“ _Exactly_ ,” he says, giving my hands a squeeze. “You’re not going to eat that bird, and yet you gave it some of your own food. You helped something that can never help you back.”

“But _you_ do that all the time!” I protest.

Peeta chuckles sadly. “I have a lot more to give,” he reminds me gently. “Except for a very short period of time, I’ve never had to worry about where my next meal comes from. Whereas you, except for an even shorter period of time, have never _known_ where your next meal would come from, if it came at all. And you gave your last bit of food to the bird anyway.”

“I gave the other two to Pollux,” I point out dryly, and Peeta laughs, happily this time. “Well, that was your first mistake,” he teases, and straightens to his feet. “There are more cookies in the house, and a whole supper on the table besides, but I’m a little worried the menu may be…badly timed.”

I raise my brows in question. I’ve eaten almost everything edible to be found in the district or the woods at one time or another. Peeta’s civilized palate will hardly disturb me.

“Chicken?” he says hopefully.

I laugh away his uncertainty. Chicken is a luxury. I can still recall every last bite of the cold chicken Peeta’s father brought in the hamper two days ago, from that first stolen morsel of breast meat to my last greedy nibbles on the peppery skin. And chickens are stupid. I think of the four fat brown hens in the Cartwrights’ back garden, clucking and fussing and pecking at my knees every time I returned Delly’s mother’s tea tin, refilled with Mom’s finest “women’s tonic” herbs.

“Chicken sounds perfect,” I assure him.

And it is. Peeta oven-roasted the chicken I saw in the icebox yesterday, and it awaits us proudly on the dining room table. The skin is golden-crisp and piping hot and perfectly seasoned with pepper and thyme, and the meat is moist and juicy and steams in my mouth. It’s even better than the cold chicken from two days ago, and when I tell Peeta so he blushes beet-red, looking embarrassed but deeply pleased.

“I’ll tell my aunt you said that,” he replies, grinning. “She made that chicken for you, and she’s the one who taught me how to cook meat. She’ll be sorry she ever let you have that goat,” he adds with a laugh.

“Goat?” I echo, confused. Can he mean Lady? And if so: “You mean…Rooba’s your aunt?”

Peeta nods. “I thought you knew,” he says.

I supposed I should have connected it sooner. Peeta told me that his mother was a butcher’s daughter, and Rooba is of an age with her, maybe a few years older. The short, chunky woman with her no-nonsense trades and flickers of merriment is as unlike Peeta’s slim, bitter mother as possible; it’s difficult to envision the two as sisters. But the memory of a black-and-white goat with a mauled shoulder and a stray wink from the woman who could have turned a fine profit on its meat reminds me that it’s not such a stretch for Rooba to be Peeta’s aunt.

“I didn’t know,” I admit. “But you should probably thank her for me, a few times.”

“Is that your subtle way of saying you like my cooking?” he teases.

“I _love_ your cooking,” I counter, and feel my own cheeks flood with color. “Is that subtle enough for you?”

There is, of course, much more than chicken on the table tonight. Peeta’s prepared a bowl of delicately boiled vegetables – potatoes, turnips, and onions – tossed with butter, parsley, garlic, and something that makes me give a surprised little “Oh!” on my first bite.

Peeta laughs at my reaction, though his blush returns with a fiery vengeance. “I added a little white wine to the sauce,” he says. “The alcohol cooks off, of course, but it does something…well, _amazing_ to the flavor.”

Our bread for the evening, which Peeta brings in after I’m half-stuffed with chicken and vegetables, is a small, dark, dense loaf that smells suspiciously like ginger cake. Peeta grins as he places it at my right hand, along with a little dish of creamy goat cheese and a small, steaming crock of applesauce.

“You made me ginger _bread_?” I ask, more than a little surprised. He mentioned it so offhandedly last night, and yet he prepared and served it exactly as he’d said.

“With goat cheese and applesauce,” he confirms. “I haven’t tried them all together yet, so I really hope it’s good.”

It is – of course it is. The richly spiced “bread” tastes almost identical to Peeta’s cake, and yet the cheese and applesauce give it an entirely different character. I try the ingredients in various arrangements and decide I prefer a thin layer of goat cheese spread on a slice of gingerbread, with a warm dollop of applesauce on top.

“The applesauce is from the garden,” Peeta explains. “There’s an apple tree there, a very old one. It was what first made this place feel like home.”

I remember the Mellarks’ apple tree all too well. I nearly died beneath its branches, soaked to the skin and frail with hunger. There were days when I would have cut off my left hand for just one of its plump pink apples, and I realize of a sudden that, since I’ve come here, Peeta’s been feeding me apples – cider, fresh slices, and now applesauce – almost ceaselessly. He even included apples in the hamper he sent for my family.

“It produces the best apples I’ve ever had,” Peeta goes on. “Round and green with a blush of red and just the right amount of tartness. I wanted to save as many of them for you as I could, but I’m still new to canning, so I ended up with mostly applesauce.”

I stare back at him, startled and a little breathless at his words. His gift of the beautiful winter coat sets his plan for our bargain before the Victory Tour, over a month ago now…but apples ripen in September. Has Peeta been planning for me to come here for nearly three months?

“You wanted to save apples _for me_?” I ask.

Peeta goes a little pale. “Well, I –” he begins, only to shake his head and say instead, firmly, “Yes. They were too delicious not to share, and apples have always reminded me of you. If you hadn’t come to live with me, I would have sent you jars of applesauce for New Year’s.”

“Why do apples remind you of me?” I puzzle.

“Why do you think?” he answers softly.

I wonder if it’s possible. If this boy, whose lifesaving generosity beams back at me from the face of every last sunny dandelion, sees my hollow, starving form in every apple. “I’m so sorry, Peeta,” I whisper.

“For what?” he asks, reaching forward to brush his fingers over my hand. “It’s not a _bad_ association, Katniss. Apple trees are amazing. Full of blossoms in the spring, and heavy with fruit in the fall, and –” He breaks off, blushing hotly, though I can’t imagine why. “They’re…well, they’re wild and beautiful and remind me of you,” he says in a rush. “It started because of that day in April, sure, but…the more I thought about it, the better it seemed to fit.”

His eyes unfocus a little, as though for a moment, he’s far away. “There were flower buds on the tree that day, you know,” he murmurs. “The branches were full of them, in spite of the terrible lingering winter. It just needed the warmth of the sun to burst into bloom.” He clears his throat and adds hoarsely, “That made me think of you too.”

 _Buds and blossoms and fruit…_ I can’t think how I’m in _any_ way like an apple tree, but Peeta’s words make my skin tingle and my breath come a little faster. I look down at his fingers, still brushing mine on the tabletop, and grasp at the first topic to come to mind. “Peeta, did you know you have sugar maples?” I ask, a little breathily. “Maybe…a fifteen-minute walk from the house? It’s early still, but –”

He looks at me, his eyes clear and focused once more, and smiles, shaking his head. “You’re impossible to surprise, you know,” he tells me, and gets up to go into the kitchen, only to return a few moments later. In the palm of his right hand is a small metal object with a red ribbon tied around it. “I meant to give you this next month, when you were bored with cabin fever,” he says, offering it to me.

I take the object from his hand with a little gasp of wonder. It’s a spile, identical to the ones Dad used the few times we went sugaring. I’ve been looking for Dad’s lost spiles for years; Peeta can’t have found them. “But…how did you –?”

“Believe it or not, your dad traded it to my granddad, a long time ago,” he says, taking his seat once more. “I think he had it in mind to take my dad out sugaring sometime. That never happened, of course, and Dad gave the spile to me when I moved out here.”

“But…” I frown. Dad’s spiles – all his hunting and foraging tools – were very precious to him. He wouldn’t have sold a spile unless he was desperate – or stood to gain something equal to the profit of his sap harvest. Had he thought of making Peeta’s dad a hunting partner?

 _Could Peeta have been Gale?_ I shake my head at the absurdity of the thought – our fathers hunting together, then us in turn – but I can’t shake the idea of Dad making an overture of friendship, _partnership_ even, to the baker’s son. “Why didn’t it happen?” I wonder aloud.

Peeta looks awkward all of a sudden. “Well…I don’t really know the whole story, but…I expect it had something to do with a girl,” he says carefully.

“Oh,” I say, and then, blushing furiously, whisper it again. “ _Oh._ ” If Dad was trading with Peeta’s grandfather, Peeta’s dad was probably still a teenager…and Mom wasn’t with Dad.

Dad had _always_ loved her, he told us, even when he was a muddy little forager in overalls, all of eight years old, and Mom was a pigtailed toddler in a pink pinafore, hiding behind her mother’s skirts. And for the first time ever, it occurs to me that Dad might not have been Mom’s first choice. That he might have brought her herbs and roots for years, yearning for her attention, while she held hands and stole kisses with a blond baker’s boy.

No wonder he didn’t follow through on his offer to take Peeta’s dad to the woods.

I get up, the spile clenched in my palm. “I…um…I should –”

Peeta stands quickly, reaching to touch my arm in a placating gesture. “Please don’t go,” he pleads. “I’m sorry I upset you. I forget sometimes that…you didn’t know.”

I sigh – Peeta’s too good at this – and let him coax me back into my chair. “So…you’ve always known?” I ask dully. “About…your dad and…my mom?”

Peeta gives me a crooked grin. “Very nearly,” he says. “Dad pointed you out on our very first day of school and told me that he’d wanted to marry your mother, but she ran off with a coal miner instead.”

My mouth drops open. “You’re making that up,” I say.

He shakes his head, chuckling. “I was all of five at the time, but it was a very… _memorable_ day,” he says. “And honestly, I think Dad was dying to tell someone. Mom was…not very nice after I was born, and…I think it made him wish for…what could have been.”

I push aside my emotions for a moment and consider this rationally. Even if Peeta’s dad and my mom had never been _together_ – my mind shrinks from the thought – it’s not unlikely that he would have longed for a sweeter, gentler wife than the one he had. And Mom is the complete opposite of Peeta’s brusque, angry mother. She most certainly would _never_ have hit her children. As unsettling as it is to contemplate: she _would_ have made a good wife for the baker. I can almost picture it: a happy, laughing Mom in a pretty print dress with a smudge of flour on her cheek, singing in the bakery kitchen as she kneads dough and whisks bowls of rich cake batter.

“And as I got older, I think it helped that I understood,” Peeta adds, very quietly. “Loving someone…who doesn’t love you back.”

The girl. Peeta’s girl, whoever she is, with her blonde curls and becoming curves. This is the first he’s ever mentioned her to me. I resolve to pummel my snow-girl to powder first thing in the morning. “You… _asked_ her, then?” I croak, fisting my hands in my lap.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

I look up to find his cheeks flushed yet again. “I – it’s too soon, you know?” he stammers. “She doesn’t – she won’t – it’s too soon,” he says again, resolutely this time.

“I don’t know about that,” I say, hating myself as the feeble assurances leave my lips. “Maybe if you brought her here, gave her a beautiful room and clothes and cooked meals for her, she might see how much you love her.”

Peeta gives a choked sort of laugh. “That’s the plan,” he says quietly.

I frown, suddenly irritated. “Well, then, what are you wasting all this on _me_ for?” I demand, with a sweeping gesture at the food, the fireplace, the snug dining room with its toffee-colored walls.

Peeta stares at me for a long serious moment. I don’t understand why, but my heart speeds a little at the intensity in his bright eyes. “I’m not wasting anything, Katniss,” he says at last. “At this moment, you are the only person in the world I want to share these things with.”

I shake my head, exasperated. He’s being ridiculous again. We’re not even _friends_ ; why would Peeta want to share his home and food with me? “And why is that?” I ask, a little mockingly.

To my surprise, Peeta grins. “Because you are painfully direct,” he replies. “You talk more than you realize and react to every new good thing with this impossible degree of wonder. And you look absolutely stunning by firelight,” he adds, his smile softening, as he gets to his feet.

For the second time tonight, my jaw drops in shock. I think Peeta just insulted me, but he said all those things in such a happy manner, as though…as though he _likes_ that about me. _And did he just say I look pretty?_

He extends a hand, practically beaming now. “Come on,” he says playfully. “We’re going to make dessert.”

It’s the first time, aside from asking me to grab two spice bottles for him yesterday, that Peeta’s asked me for anything. I seize his hand and scramble out of the chair. “Yes!” I tell him emphatically, almost dragging him into the kitchen. “What do you want me to do?”

He takes a small mixing bowl from the kitchen table and presses it into my hands. “I want you to bring me some snow,” he says, his blue eyes dancing.

“Snow?” I echo. He knows about spiles and sugaring; can he be planning to make sugar snow? But he can’t; it’s far too early still.

“Snow,” he repeats firmly. “I’ll get everything else.”

I don’t bother with a coat as I trip down the back steps and scoop a heaping bowlful from the first drift I come to. The backyard is breathtaking tonight, with moonlight bathing the garden in blue light and making the drifts shimmer with diamonds. The trellis looks like an archway of spun silver, a secret fairy place – or a lover’s rendezvous.

I bring the snow to Peeta with a dubious frown – he’s just putting the coffeepot on the stove – and he laughs. “I haven’t had this either,” he admits, “but Grandad used to make it when Dad and Uncle Marek were little, and Dad still swears it was better than anything they sell at the creamery.”

He eyes the bowl of snow for a moment, then carries it into the pantry. I watch curiously as he adds a heaping scoop of sugar from one of the barrels, then he brings the bowl back to the kitchen table where a small, stout bottle of cream, a spice jar, and a dark, tiny extract bottle – _please let it be the vanilla!_ – await. He adds a careful splash of the extract – it _is_ vanilla, and my knees go a little wobbly at the scent – several pinches from the spice jar – nutmeg, I think – and the entire bottle of cream, then stirs the mixture thoroughly with a long-handled spoon. I can’t begin to guess at what he’s making, but it’s a bit like a frozen batter, white and thick, flecked here and there with nutmeg.

He stops stirring at last and raises a heaping spoonful to my mouth, grinning like a little boy who’s just been given something he’s always wanted. “What do you think?” he asks eagerly.

I guide the spoon to my lips and take a small bite of its contents, gasping as it melts on my tongue. It’s as cold as snow but creamy and sweet and _good_. The headiness of the vanilla, the rustic spice of nutmeg, the rich mouthfeel of real cream…it’s so good that I almost can’t breathe.

I clean the spoon with another greedy bite and hear Peeta laugh. “She likes it, then?” he teases.

“She does,” I reply through a melting mouthful of sweet cream and spice. “What _is_ this?”

“Snow ice cream,” he tells me giddily. “And you and I are going to sit on the porch together and have enormous bowls of it.”

“Outside?” I say. “In this cold?”

“I’ve made arrangements for that,” he says with a grin.

While I separate the snow ice cream into two heaping bowls, stealing furtive licks from the spoon whenever Peeta’s back is turned, he takes out two mugs – the enormous one we shared hot chocolate from on my first night here and my small, battered mug from home – and puts a little brown sugar and nutmeg in both, then fills them just over halfway with hot coffee and tops them with cream.

“I know you don’t like coffee,” he says, extending the little mug to me, “but I don’t think you’ve tried it this way.”

I take a cautious sip of the beverage and give a little whimper of pleasure. This is too much – _far_ too much. The coffee flavor is still very present, but the brown sugar buffers it, taking away the bitter edge, and the cream lends a sweet, buttery smoothness, peppered faintly with the nutmeg.

“I kind of love nutmeg,” Peeta confesses. “I hope you don’t mind.”

I grasp the front of his sweater with my free hand. “Promise you’ll make this again,” I groan. I’ve barely had one sip, but I can’t bear to drink the rest if I know I’ll never have it again.

Peeta laughs shakily and covers my hand with his, and I start a little at the touch. When I grabbed his sweater, somehow I hadn’t considered that I was touching his chest, and the weight of his hand on mine presses my curled fingers against his heart. “Every morning, if you want it,” he promises.

Peeta gets out a tray for our coffee and dessert, then retrieves two heavy wool blankets from the warming rack in the living room. I carry the tray out onto the frosty porch, feeling a little silly, and he spreads a blanket in one of the curved-back chairs for me. “Sit down,” he urges. “I’ll wrap you up.”

Feeling even more foolish, I set the tray on the little table, which has been moved from between the chairs to in front of them, and sink into a cocoon of fire-warmed wool. I’m so small that Peeta could bury me with one quick fold of the blanket, but he bundles it about me with as much care as when he wrapped me up in the sleigh. He tucks my slippered feet beneath one hip and tugs a little of the blanket up to cover my head like a hood. “Nice and warm?” he asks at last, handing me my bowl and mug.

“Perfect,” I assure him. The bowl is icy-cold, of course, but my legs are snug beneath layers of toasty wool.

Peeta drapes his own blanket over his shoulders like a cloak and sits beside me. Impossibly warm though he may be, someone should wrap him up too, I think. I balance my mug on my thigh for a moment and reach over to tug the blanket over his shoulder, closer to the exposed skin of his neck.

He catches his breath at the touch. “Thank you, Katniss,” he whispers.

We sit for a long time, sipping and sighing and eating spoonful after creamy spoonful in our nests of warm wool. When my own dish of snow ice cream is gone – far too soon; I even drank the tiny puddle at the bottom – I lean over to sneak a spoonful from Peeta. He allows it, chuckling softly, then scoots his chair a little closer and sets his bowl inside mine. I raise my brows as he takes a spoonful from our stacked bowls, then I take one for myself.

It’s a startlingly intimate act, eating from his bowl, and we’re so close together that I could press my cheek to his if I were sitting up straight. As it is, curled up in the chair as I am, we’re close to our standing proportions. I’m little, but Peeta’s only about medium height. I could rest my temple against his jaw if I wanted…or lay my head on his shoulder.

“You’re tired,” he murmurs, and I realize I’ve unconsciously started to lean toward him a little.

“Not really,” I lie, moving quickly back into my chair. I _am_ getting sleepy, between the blanket, the hot drink, and all the pure fresh air I’ve breathed in today, but I blame my sinking head on the warmth of his body. After all, even plants turn toward the sun.

“I, um…” he begins. I look at him, puzzled, and he takes the mug and bowls from me and sets them on the table. “I don’t mind,” he says softly, settling back into his chair. “And I…well, I know it’s cold. And you’ve had a busy day.”

He’s not far wrong. I can’t remember when I’ve last had such an emotional day, let alone stayed awake through all of it. “Okay,” I whisper. I scoot my own chair closer, pushing the arms of our chairs together, and permit myself – _for just_ one _moment,_ I promise silently – to rest my head on Peeta’s shoulder.

Only he’s _so_ very warm and smells _so_ good that I can’t bear to sit back in my own chair again. I close my eyes and nestle my cheek against his shoulder – finding a more comfortable spot, of course – and Peeta gives a deep sigh. Another layer of blanket drapes over my shoulder, and I realize he’s covering me with his blanket too. Covering us both.

 _I know this feeling,_ I muse sleepily, _of sharing a cover and body heat._ Could _this_ be what happens at night? Can it possibly be Peeta who lies beside me in that enormous bed, and his delicious warmth that eases my dreams? Are his the hands that tuck the blankets so snugly around me every morning?

I hear sleigh bells in the distance, jingling brightly in the sharp cold of the night air. “Lavinia’s home,” I murmur against Peeta’s shoulder.

He sighs once more and I feel his fingertips brush my cheek. “And here I thought it was Father Christmas,” he says, almost sadly.

I open my eyes reluctantly and watch them approach. The moonlight and diamond-snow lend a fairytale quality to the image of a woman in a pony-drawn sleigh, sailing across a frozen lake. I try to think if I’ve heard that tale before. _A mute maiden in a sleigh of ice, with the reddest hair anyone had ever seen…_

I hear another sound – footsteps crunching in snow – and turn my head a little to see Pollux crossing the front yard in a positive fury. Peeta chuckles, his shoulder shaking gently beneath my cheek. “This should be fun,” he murmurs against my hair. “You’re about the see the Avox equivalent of ‘What time of day do you call this?’”

He’s not kidding. Before Lavinia has even stopped the sleigh, Pollux is alongside it, gesticulating wildly. Once or twice he goes to Rye to love on him a little, stroking the pony’s strong neck or petting his face, but always he goes back to Lavinia. Now and again they make frustrated guttural sounds at each other, and Lavinia repeatedly points up at the porch – at Peeta, I presume. Finally she throws up her hands, takes a parcel from the seat and comes up to the house, leaving Pollux to deal with the sleigh and its contents.

She’s pink-cheeked from the cold and anything but cross. Grinning, she rummages in her leather bag as she climbs the steps and takes out a small white paper parcel – something from the bakery – and an envelope, both of which she hands to me.

“Really?” Peeta says, laughing brightly.

I peer inside the bakery parcel to find two large sugar cookies, just like the ones Peeta’s father sent over the night I left, right down to the dusting of pink sugar.

“Dad and I are apparently trying to out-spoil the Everdeen girls,” Peeta tells me. “I’ll have to come up with something even better to send Prim next time.”

At his mention of Prim, I turn my attention to the envelope. Maybe Lavinia couldn’t deliver my letter for some reason and brought it back with her. But this isn’t my letter. It has _my_ name on it. In my sister’s handwriting.

“ _Really?_ ” I squeal.

Lavinia nods, smiling widely. She mimes writing, then points up at the sky. “ _That’s_ why you’re so late,” Peeta realizes. “You waited for Prim to finish her letter.”

She nods again and I leap from the chair, nearly crashing into the little table, to give her a hug. “Thank you so much!” I whisper. She smells like Twelve, like soot and coal fires and fresh bakery bread, and I hold her a little longer than necessary, my eyes growing misty as I breathe in the scents of home.

Just as suddenly I pull back from her and look at Peeta. “Is it okay –?” I begin, but he’s already waving me inside.

“Go. _Read_ ,” he insists, grinning as broadly as Lavinia did a moment ago, and hands me the little bakery parcel. “Don’t forget your cookies.”

I hurry inside, hands shaking a little as I tear open the envelope, and sit in the armchair by the living room fire. There are _pages_ here – three pages, covered with Prim’s curly, enthusiastic scrawl. I set aside the envelope and cookies on the low table and begin to read.

_Dear Katniss,_

_Please don’t hate Mom too much. She cried so hard after you left that I thought she would make herself sick. She sat on the bed and cried and cried, so I wrapped her up in one of the blankets that Mr. Mellark brought. They’re soft and smell like bread, and I thought it would help, but it only made her cry harder._

_I fell asleep for a little, but she made another pot of Mr. Mellark’s coffee and sat up all night. She kept saying “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” over and over again, when I tried to get her to go to bed. She looked like she did after Dad died. Lost._

I set down the letter for a moment, frowning. I know now why Mom was so upset the night I left – what it was that she feared – but I had no idea it had disturbed her so deeply. There have been days, countless hollow days, where Mom didn’t care whether I lived or died…and yet the idea of me selling myself – my _body_ , if necessary – to keep my family alive had driven her half-mad with grief.

Have I misjudged her all these years? Maybe she always _has_ cared about me. _Or maybe,_ a petty little voice suggests, _you were her last connection to Dad, and_ that’s _the loss she’s grieving._ I ignore both lines of thought and read on.

_This morning Mr. Mellark came over with another basket of food, and he got worried when he saw Mom asleep at the table. He made us breakfast, eggs and potatoes and BACON, plus fresh sticky buns from the bakery, but when he tried to wake Mom to eat she got really angry. She yelled at him and said it was all his fault and made him leave. He was sad, but I think he understood. And she ate some of the food after he left._

_She went back to bed after that and I looked through the food Mr. Mellark brought. There was more milk and bread and eggs, a little jar of salt, even a nice piece of cold beef, plus the vegetables Marko promised for our chicken soup, of course. I’m not as good a cook as you, but I peeled and cut up the vegetables and heated up the stock from last night._

My heart sinks as I read. That was me after Dad died – a twelve-year old child, teaching myself to cook because Mom had simply ceased to function – and what I had always hoped to spare Prim. What had I done, leaving her on her own?

I turn the page over.

_But before I could do more than that, Marko arrived with a little yellow cake from the bakery. He said his dad was worried and wanted him to check on us. He peeked in the kettle and asked why there wasn’t any chicken in the chicken soup, and I didn’t say a word about the Hawthornes, just that we ran out. He gave a sad little laugh and said we’d make do. We had cold beef sandwiches with vegetable soup and lemon cake for dessert, and Mom even got up after a little because she smelled the food. She was confused to see Marko in the house and called him “Marek” once, but he made sure she got plenty to eat, and lots of hot tea too. “If you won’t listen to Dad, listen to me,” he told her. “Peeta cares more for Katniss than he does for himself. He would never ever hurt her.” I knew that already, of course, but he talked to Mom like she was a wounded animal. Very soft and soothing._

_After lunch Mom fussed with some socks that needed mending and didn’t go back to bed, which was good, and Marko went away for a little, promising to come back with supper. And did he ever! He came back just after dark with TWO pies: an apple pie with sweet crumbly things on top, and a meat pie, full of chicken and potatoes and peas in gravy. I’ve never had anything so good in my life! Even the crusts were flaky and wonderful._

_He built up all the fires and made sure our beds had plenty of blankets, and before he left he reminded us that we’ll be going to see the new house tomorrow. I can’t wait! I’ll write more then and tell you all about it._

I smile, reassured by Peeta’s brother’s kindness, and pick up the second page.

_Oh my gosh! I was just sitting in science class when the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen brought me a little package with my name and flowers PAINTED on it and a letter from YOU! I’m going to hide your letter inside my textbook and try to read it in class. I’m so excited I can’t stand it! (And the wrapped thing smells so good! Is it a cookie?)_

I chuckle softly. If this was Prim’s response to Lavinia with shortbread and a letter, what will she say once she’s read it?

I don’t have to wait for an answer:

_OH MY GOSH! Katniss! Peeta barely told me ANYTHING about your new house! Do you REALLY have a cave shower and a rock fireplace and a coat lined with fur?? And magical pumpkin soup?? I can’t believe it! It sounds like the fairy tales Dad used to tell us! Do you have closets full of pretty dresses too?_

I laugh at that. Pretty dresses are Prim’s fairy tale, not mine, though I make a note to tell her about all the new clothes I _do_ have in my next letter. Except for the nightgowns, maybe…

_The butter cookie Peeta sent was AMAZING. I was only going to eat a quick nibble between classes and then share it with my friends at lunch, but it was so good that I ate half of it myself before I even got to lunch! Is it like the shortbread he made for you? No wonder you ate almost the entire plate!_

_I have to go meet Mom at the bakery, but I’ll write more as soon as we see the new house._

I bite my lip, worrying it a little with my teeth. After the conversation with Pollux, I’m more than a little nervous about what she found.

I carefully turn the page.

_Katniss, I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say. Our new home is above the old apothecary shop, where Mom used to live. Peeta bought it for us, both the house and the shop. When Mr. Mellark told us where we were going, Mom looked strange for a minute. And then we went inside and I thought she was going to cry._

_When we got here, the red-haired girl (Lavinia) was tidying things up. Everything was clean and fresh and neat as a pin. The shop front is as good as new, and the workroom too. There are some of Grandpa and Grandma’s old mortar-and-pestles and bottles and jars still there, plus droppers and corks and stoppers too. Mr. Mellark says Mom can reopen the shop whenever she wants, and I can work there too! There’s even a new sign ready for the front. EVERDEEN’S APOTHECARY, it reads, and it’s painted with all our flowers. Purple alyssum for Mom, yellow primroses for me, and white katniss for you._

_The upstairs is bigger than our whole house in the Seam, and everything was made up when we got here, ready for us to move in. It has two brick fireplaces, both of them full of logs, and an icebox (!) with meat and cheese and eggs and milk and fruit and vegetables. There’s flour and sugar and salt in the cupboards – and dishes! Brand-new dishes and kettles and fresh bread from the bakery – and rugs! Big woven rugs EVERYWHERE!_

_There are THREE bedrooms, so we each have our own room – even YOU, when you come to visit! They’re all about the same size, but Mom’s room is all ferns and roses and lace, and mine is yellow, with a beautiful iron bedframe and a quilt covered with wildflowers. (There’s even a basket for Buttercup!) And there are clothes in the closets and dressers! Sweaters and trousers and socks and new shoes – even dresses, for both of us, and all so pretty! Mr. Mellark said we’re to go to the shops and buy whatever else we’d like, as much as we want._

_Oh, and at the back of the house is a little screened porch. Mr. Mellark said it used to be a place for drying herbs, especially during the summer, but that during the winter it could double as a house for Lady. When it gets a little warmer, Marko says he’ll build a brand-new hut for her in the backyard!_

_And best of all, we’re right next door to the bakery. Our windows face each other, so I can wave at Marko and Mr. Mellark if I want, and we’ll wake up every single day to the smell of fresh bread! Mr. Mellark said he’ll bring fresh bread and things every day but that I can also stop by the bakery anytime for a cookie or a sticky bun. He said Mrs. Mellark might not be very happy at first, but Peeta pays her in advance, so there’s nothing she can do about it. And we’re a Merchant family now, so she’ll have to treat us nicely!_

_Mr. Mellark and Marko are cooking supper now. Mom and I are staying here tonight (don’t worry, Rory’s stopping by to look in on Buttercup and Lady!), and tomorrow after school Marko’s going to help us move all our things over from the old house. The whole place has electric light, so I can sit up as late as I like and READ!_

_I think Lavinia is getting anxious to go, and I still need to write a little note for Peeta. I’m sorry I didn’t talk about your letter more, especially when things are so much more exciting where you are! I’ll write about it next time, okay?_

_I love you so much! Thank you a hundred times for agreeing to live with Peeta. This is already the very best thing that has ever happened to our family, and I know things are going to get better and better. For you and us._

_I’ll write again soon._

_Love,  
_ _Prim_

I’m not sure which I’m aware of first: the hot tears spilling down my face or the hand in front of me, offering a handkerchief. I look up, my breath coming in ragged, shallow pants, to find Peeta beside me, looking utterly miserable. There’s a letter in his hand too, much shorter than mine. “ _Please_ let me explain,” he says quietly.

I take the handkerchief with numb fingers as he sits on the low table in front of me. “I’m not going to stop taking care of them, Katniss,” he promises. “Or give them less of anything – far from it. They’ll have everything I promised, and more besides. They won’t have to spend a single penny of their own money if they don’t wish to.”

I stare back at him in disbelief. Does he think I have such a low opinion of him? Does he really not understand why I’m crying?

Peeta’s given Mom her family’s home and business – her old life – back. She’ll thrive and grow healthy again, and the Seam residents won’t suffer because she’ll still find ways to trade with them. Prim will work beside her and become an apothecary too. She’ll wake every morning to the smells of fresh bread and sticky buns and study long into the night beneath her precious electric lights.

“I did it for two reasons – well, more than two,” Peeta explains, very gently. “But there were two that mattered most of all. First: your mother and Prim are both gifted healers. They can practice their craft in the shop and earn a steady income from it.”

I give a little sob at these words, but he’s not quite finished. “And second: this gives them a business, a livelihood that’s all their own,” he says, leaning forward to take my hands in his. “It will make their…new position more acceptable to the district, and it ensures that they – that _all_ of you – are taken care of, if…anything should happen to me.”

His eyes are full of grief now, and his hands slip from mine. “I’m sorry, Katniss,” he whispers. “I should have asked you first. I should have –”

“ _Why?_ ” I whisper back.

He blinks rapidly, confused by the question. “Wh…I-I told you why – ” he says.

“ _Why_ ,” I say again, my voice rising warningly, “do you insist on doing things I can never, _ever_ repay you for?”

His confusion vanishes, and the grief too. He’s loving, tender Peeta again, the impossibly _good_ boy who feeds wild birds and brings home Avoxes and buys businesses for poor families, and it only makes me angrier. “I don’t expect you to pay me back, Katniss,” he says softly. “ _Ever._ ”

“But that’s how it _works!_ ” I snap, furious at the tears that I can’t seem to stop. “You give me something; I give you something at least as good in return!”

Peeta shakes his head. “You’ve given me your presence in this house,” he says, smiling, and raises a hand to brush a stray lock of hair from my damp cheek. “That’s worth more than a hundred apothecary shops.”

It may be sheer madness, but there’s only one thing I can think to do. It’s not the first time I’ve been crushed by my debt to Peeta, with the feeblest of tokens to offer in return. Swift as a snare, I turn my head and press my lips against his palm.

Peeta sucks in his breath with a sharp hiss and his hand stills against my face, his fingers splayed along my cheek. He’s either shocked or repulsed, but I’m too desperate in this moment to care. I owe him too much, and I have nothing else to give.

I press little kisses over every inch of his palm, scarcely aware of the gentle brush of his thumb against my nose. “ _Why?_ ” I groan, lips parted against his skin. “I can’t repay this. Can’t even _begin_ to tell you how grateful –”

Further words die in my throat as his free hand covers my other cheek, cradling my face in the warmth of his palms. His caught breath leaves him in a sigh, a cool puff of nutmeg and coffee and sweet cream against my brow. “I don’t want you to be grateful, Katniss,” he whispers. “I want you to be _happy_.”

 _Happiness is elusive,_ I want to tell him. _A silly, fragile thing, impossible to promise or protect._ And yet, sitting in this fireside armchair with Peeta’s hands on my face, learning that my family will be comfortable and wealthy for the rest of their lives simply because I agreed to share this dream of a house with the kindest boy I’ve ever known…for the first time since Dad died, I wonder if happiness might actually be possible.

I close my eyes for a long moment and feel Peeta’s broad thumbs brush over them, wiping the last traces of tears from my lashes. The gesture is at once comforting and oddly loverlike. “So…you’re okay with their new house, then?” he asks lightly.

I open my eyes a little to see the smallest of smiles playing about his lips. “Pollux made me promise to be,” I answer, my own mouth tugging up a little in response.

I don’t offer more words of thanks, and Peeta doesn’t ask or expect them. I shiver a little at the loss of his hands against my face and return his – now damp and crumpled – handkerchief. As on the previous two nights, he urges me to sleep as late as I like and wishes me a quiet _good night_ , one fingertip stroking my cheek.

I ascend the stairs, far less drowsy now, to find Lavinia in my room, her work clothes exchanged for a rose-patterned robe and soft slippers, unpacking the parcel she brought in earlier. I’ve never seen her dressed so informally, but it doesn’t surprise me. When last I saw the old apothecary shop, it was an abandoned, soot-streaked building with boarded-up windows. She would have worn herself ragged just making it _presentable_ , let alone as clean and pretty as Prim said.

The parcel, a bundle of brown paper and green ribbon, lies open on my bed, its contents a patchwork of many small items in cloud-like shades. “ _Now_ what have you brought me?” I tease, coming closer, and she holds up one of the items for my appraisal.

I gape at her, my cheeks on fire. She’s holding a bra, a pretty thing made of dark blue eyelet cotton with slim straps and neat, tiny cups, maybe even small enough for my pigeon-egg breasts.

I’ve never worn a bra before. I’ve never needed to. Last summer was the first time my breasts were big enough to even _attempt_ one, and it had proven a disaster. I borrowed one of Mom’s – a cheap Seam one, with dingy shapeless cups and frail elastic – but she had always been curvier than me, even at her leanest. I’d had to secure the band with a pin and stuff the cups with socks just to keep it from sliding around, and it looked ridiculous. I couldn’t leave the house like that, to say nothing of meeting Gale in the woods, so I improvised by wrapping a length of bandage around my chest instead. Not tightly, just enough to prevent any jiggling. It made my breasts look even smaller, which didn’t bother me in the least. 

And of course, this winter I’ve lost weight everywhere. I doubt there’s an inch of fat on my entire body.

“Why on earth would you buy me this?” I hiss, snatching the garment out of Lavinia’s hands and crushing it into a tiny ball. She quirks a brow at me and lifts a second bra from the pile, this one made of lavender cotton printed with little white flowers.

I give the pile a good look for the first time. It’s all _underthings_. A dozen or more pairs of underwear, plus a few camisoles and the bras Lavinia’s already shown me, all in dusky shades of gray and blue and purple, with the same sorts of pretty details as the nightgowns Peeta bought me.

I’m so mortified I can barely draw a breath. “Does Peeta know you bought me this stuff?” I squeak.

She chuckles and takes a scrap of paper from the pocket of her robe, then hands it to me. It’s a list in unfamiliar masculine handwriting; Peeta’s, I imagine. I remember him and Lavinia looking at a scrap page like this before she left this morning. _Curtains for Everdeens,_ it begins. _Rugs. Extra milk and eggs. Underthings for Katniss._

The blush on my cheeks blazes its way down my neck and throat. “He _told you_ to get these for me?”

Of course he did. I remember now: the guilty look when I came back to the kitchen, and Peeta’s remark about _those sorts of colors._

She’s got her slate out now. _Less awkward if it’s me,_ she writes, and shrugs.

She’s right, of course. Peeta buying underthings for a girl would have sparked all manner of district gossip, however absurd the idea behind it – whereas Lavinia could buy them without anyone batting an eye.

“Did he tell you…?” I uncrumple the bra in my hands and hold it out like a dead snake. “Did he… _ask_ for these?”

Lavinia chuckles, more mischievously this time, and tucks away her slate again, giving me the same spread-hands gesture as Pollux did earlier. Avox shorthand for innocent-but-not denial of all things, I think – which probably means my answer is _yes_. I can’t decide which is more embarrassing: that Peeta knows I have breasts or that he guessed I had a shortage of decent undergarments to cover them. And the rest of me.

I toss the bra back onto the pile and pick up a pair of underwear: dark purple eyelet cotton, beautifully soft beneath my fingers. They’re almost too pretty to wear. Certainly too pretty for _me_.

Peeta asked for these colors. I wonder if, like Madge, he thinks I look nice in purple. I wonder why it even matters, unless he plans to see me in these garments.

And just like that, I realize there _is_ something I can offer him.

Still holding the pair of underwear, I go to the far dresser and open the second drawer. A sea of nightgowns lie within, but which is the prettiest? I take out one for consideration: sage green cotton printed with lavender sprigs, with little cap sleeves and a pale purple ribbon threaded around the neckline.

I shake out the skirt and hold the nightgown up to my body. It falls just to my knees; a summer garment, most likely, but ideal for my purpose tonight.

I come back around the bed and begin undressing in front of the fire while Lavinia watches me, perplexed. She’s laid out a nightgown on the warming rack for me already, ankle-length gray wool that looks as soft as kitten fur, but I ignore it. I lay my clothes over the chair at the dressing table and slip the nightgown over my head. The cotton is crisp and cool against my bare skin and makes my nipples tighten almost painfully. I shrug off the discomfort and shimmy out of my old underwear, slipping on the purple eyelet ones instead.

I look at myself in the mirror and barely contain a gasp. I’m frighteningly thin; maybe repulsively thin. My too-prominent ribs are concealed beneath the nightgown, thankfully, and after two days of Peeta’s cooking, my cheeks are no longer quite hollow, but my exposed arms are skin and bone.

I go to the near dresser and take out the first sweater to hand: Prim’s pale yellow cardigan. It’s too short in the sleeves, but I’m not wearing it for looks – well, not in _that_ way. _I’ll take it off when he gets here,_ I reason. _Or maybe when the lights are off._

 _I’ll take_ everything _off when he gets here,_ I realize, and shiver.

I go to the dressing table, tug the tie from my braid, and unplait the sections, brushing them out. I’m parroting Mom – those nights when she made herself beautiful to make love with my father – but I don’t know what else to do. How else to charm and please.

My hair is thin and black and pin-straight, not bright and curling and lustrous like Mom’s used to be, but it’s still sleek and smooth from my shower last night. I wonder if Peeta will like the feel of it in his face. I wonder if I should kiss him awake tomorrow.

I wonder if he’ll kiss the tip of my breast as I lean over him.

I shiver again, almost violently this time, and remind myself that I’m not afraid. I have no reason to be. I’m offering this freely to the boy I can give nothing else, and I know he’ll be kind and sweet and gentle. I’ve felt his hands on my face, on my hands and feet as well. A chipmunk wouldn’t eat from the hand of a man who would use a girl roughly.

I feel a touch at my shoulder and practically jump out of my skin. Lavinia stands beside me, her brows raised and her eyes troubled. She gestures at my clothing and unbraided hair, clearly seeking explanation, and I ask, quavering a little, “D-Do you have any perfume?”

Her face falls. She seems disappointed, even sad, but she goes to the bathroom and returns with a tall bottle of some sort of golden oil. She gives a half-hearted shrug and uncaps the bottle – I smell heady, almost spicy flowers – and dabs a little behind my ears, at my temples, and in the stark hollow of my throat.

She caps the bottle again and looks into my eyes, shaking her head sadly. Her disapproval frightens me a little. It reminds me of the enormity of what I’m planning to do; how irrevocable the consequences will be. This particular gift I can give only once, and it’s possible Peeta may not want it. What will I do if he refuses me? How will I ever face him again?

Lavinia lifts my chin with one slim hand – she’s half a head taller than me – and presses her forehead against mine. It’s a strangely maternal gesture, and for a moment I can almost feel my mother here. As though she’s trying to tell me something, or maybe Lavinia is, but there are no words, no gestures, not even chalk marks on a slate.

Lavinia draws back at last and presses a featherlight kiss to my cheek. She shakes her head once more, a last silent plea, then she scoops up my discarded clothes and leaves the room.

My body jangling with nervous energy, I use the bathroom, wash my hands and face with the chamomile soap from the shower, and brush my teeth vigorously. A search of the bathroom cupboard quickly turns up the jar of rose-scented cream, and I rub a little over my face and hands, even work a small amount into the rough patches of my feet. I know precious little of what happens in bed with a man, but Prim’s and my feet are always touching in bed, and I shudder to think of rubbing my calluses against Peeta’s feet.

 _Foot._ Peeta only has one real foot, and half a leg on the other side.

I remind myself that it doesn’t matter, not for what I intend for us to do…but it _does_. Peeta has half a leg because a wolverine tore his right calf to bloody ribbons, and there had been no way to save both his life and his limb. I can imagine the Capitol surgeons and the doctors afterward: brisk, efficient, emotionless. Peeta was just a body to them, a body that needed to lose a part in order to survive. I give a quiet cry at the thought. Has _anyone_ shown him comfort or tenderness since his amputation? He hasn’t even “asked” his girl – to marry him? to love him? to join him in this beautiful house? – yet, so it won’t have been her.

I wonder if he takes off his prosthesis for bed and find it impossible to envision either way. I’ve seen a glimpse of Peeta’s artificial limb on television, of course, but not when the rest of him was naked.

I hurry back into the bedroom, my cheeks painfully flushed. I’ve yet to consider how I’ll actually make this happen. There’s only the slightest chance that the stranger who comes to my bed _is_ Peeta, after all. If I want to share this bed with him tonight, my best bet would be to seek him out now and tell him my plan.

Which I will never in a million years be able to do.

My shivering legs bead with goose-pimples, and I quickly climb under the covers. There’s only one thing to be done, then: I need to stay awake till my bed partner comes. If it’s Lavinia, I can simply go to sleep, the mystery solved. If it’s Peeta…I’ll do _something_. I’ll tell him my offer – or take my clothes off, if I can’t get my tongue to work.

I wonder, not for the first time, if the sight of my naked body will send him bolting from the room. I’m dark and plain and so desperately thin. Even a kind boy like Peeta will want full, firm breasts and soft, creamy flesh beneath his hands.

 _And if it’s Pollux…?_ I shake my head and give a nervous chuckle. If it’s Pollux, I think I’ll laugh with relief before kicking him soundly back out again. He’ll have no business in here anyway.

 _No one_ has any business in here, not really. So who _is_ getting into this bed and lying beside me in the darkness?

There’s nothing to do but wait. I lie on my side for a little, then on my back, but I’m too restless. I get up and pace the floor for a while, but that doesn’t help either. The lights are all still on, leaving the room uncomfortably bright, but it feels better that way. Safer. No one can sneak in now. Whatever happens with Peeta, before the end of the night I’ll have an answer to the mysterious presence in my bed.

Except time is dragging on, and no one is coming. On the past two nights, my bed partner came not long after Lavinia left me. Do they know I’m still awake? Maybe they only come after the lights are out.

I glance at the light switch but only consider it for a moment. I know my part, at least well enough to get started, but I don’t think I can do it with the lights out. Strange as it seems, it would be a hundred times easier to just _tell_ Peeta that he can have me – and let him do what he will – than it would be to reach for him under the covers and explain it with touch. To run my fingers along his warm skin, or put his big hand on my breast –

I spring out of bed, dizzied by the rush of hot blood to my face, and go quickly to the dresser. The family plant book lies on top, where it’s been since my first night here. My head needs clearing – or _calming_ , at the very least – and there’s always been something soothing about the plant book. Mom used to read to us from it when Dad was too tired to give us a song or an old tale. There were stories here too, she said, if we knew where to look.

I bring the book back to bed with me and open it carefully to the first yellowed page. _All-Heal_ , it says in crabbed writing. I give an unconscious yawn and prop myself up on a hillock of downy pillows, taking care to put the pine needle ones nearest my face.

I rest the book on my ribs and begin to read. My head lolls a little, but I don’t let it worry me. The room is fully lit, and I’m a hunter, with keen ears. I’m not all that tired anyway, and a little doze won’t hurt. My eyes drift closed…

I wake with a start to pitch darkness and the sensation of someone standing at my bedside. I would swear I only drifted off for a moment, but apparently it was long enough. I bite down on my lip to stifle a squeak of fright. There are only three other people in this house, and none of them mean me harm.

But still I don’t open my eyes.

I feel hands on my arms, shifting them ever so gently to remove the object in their grasp – the plant book. I must have fallen asleep with it hugged to my chest and my mysterious visitor is trying to put it away. They’re helping to take care of my possessions and making me more comfortable all at once. So why can’t I stop shaking?

I hear the book come to rest on the dresser-top, but my visitor doesn’t walk around the bed like I expect. My floors may be nearly silent beneath the plush furs, but I can tell when only a few steps have been taken. The person’s at my bedside again.

If ever I’m going to act, now is the time: lying here, as I am, in a pretty nightgown and fine underthings and perfume. There’s no way it can end badly. If it’s Lavinia in the darkness, she’ll probably switch on the lights and make me exchange my nightgown for the warm one that’s still on the rack. If it’s Pollux…well, I’d like to think he’d know that an invitation made in this bed would not be intended for him. And really, I can’t imagine Pollux being in here anyway.

If it’s Peeta – if it could somehow be Peeta Mellark in the darkness, just inches from my body – he can say yes or he can say no, and right now both prospects are equally terrifying. But I have nothing else to give him – and I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to prepare the “offer.” It’s unthinkable not even to present it.

Light as breath, a hand touches my cheek, brushing a bit of hair back from my face, and I go rigid against the mattress. _Just say it!_ hisses an impatient voice in my mind. _If it’s Lavinia, she won’t care. If it’s Peeta, he might take your offer and he might not. Either way, you’ll have an answer!_

I part my dry lips, but no sound comes out. I can’t do this. I’m a coward.

And then I hear clearly in my mind what danced on the fringes of it before Lavinia left me for the night. My mother’s voice, trembling but strong: _I know how you feel about owing, about paying people back, but Peeta might not see it that way. Please don't feel you have to give him anything he doesn't ask for._

I knew what she meant even then. Peeta hasn’t asked for this, and he probably never will. He certainly won’t see it as payment of any kind, and it would probably hurt him to learn that’s how I intend it.

And I want, more than anything in the world, to spare Peeta Mellark any more hurt. I want him to be cherished as a friend and as a lover; to be _welcomed_ into a woman’s bed, not invited out of debt or duty by a frightened girl. I want him to be happy: as wildly, gloriously happy as he keeps trying to make me.

I owe him far more than my life, and I’ll pay it back, every last bit. I have to. But I’ll find another way.

What we have already, I realize, is too precious to spoil. With a lifetime ahead of me in this house, Peeta and I might even be friends one day. Can I trade his easy smiles, his gentle touches, or his sweetness for a few minutes of gasping and grunting and pain, just for the hollow satisfaction of knowing I’ve given him the only thing of value that I possess?

Above me, the person sighs, drawing their fingers back from my cheek, and goes around to the other side of the bed. I hear the rustle of discarded clothing; feel the fur coverlet slip back a little and the weight of another’s body settle opposite mine before the blankets are drawn up once more.

This too, strangely enough, I would miss. There’s a comfort to my mysterious bed partner: their quiet movements as they undress, the faint extra warmth beneath the covers as they draw them up over us both. How they make their side of the bed every morning and tuck me in, so snugly. I like the sound of another’s breath in the darkness, slow and soft with sleep, and would no sooner give that up than I would my pleasant meals with Peeta.

The night our bargain was made, Peeta said he wanted my company – _nothing more,_ he assured my mother. A wounded boy living in the woods, far from his family and friends, alone with two devoted but silent servants…a boy who feeds wild birds and befriended a chipmunk…Maybe that _is_ all he wants. Another human voice in this big, empty house. Someone to sit at his table, to talk with him and share his food.

Maybe even someone to lie beneath the same covers and ease him to sleep with their quiet breath.

I shake my head. This much I know for certain: whatever is happening in my bed at night is not a part of the bargain I made with Peeta. He would have said, long before now, if it were.

There are three other people in this house, all with rooms and fine beds of their own, and yet one of them comes every night under cover of darkness to share this bed of fur and pine with me. A Victor and two Avoxes…any – _all_ – of them might be plagued by brutal nightmares. Maybe they share the bed as much for their own comfort as mine.

Such a person, I realize, would be horrified to discover that their bed was shared by a scrawny, half-naked girl, perfumed and prettified in a feeble attempt to be alluring. How could I have been so _stupid?_

Deeply grateful for Prim’s sweater covering the top half of my body, I curl up in a small ball, drawing in my legs like a turtle, and blush at my foolishness. Whoever is on the other side of this bed most assuredly has no interest in my bare skin, and all I’ve managed to accomplish by wearing the pretty nightclothes is a state of chilly discomfort. The bed is wonderfully warm as always, but I’ve never slept in so little. I give an impatient little shiver, longing for the heavy nightgown Lavinia chose for me, and chafe my downy legs with my palms.

There’s a moment of tension from the other side of the mattress, then I feel my companion slip out from under the blankets, so carefully. I hear a soft creak from the foot of the bed – there’s a chest there, I think – and suddenly I’m covered with another blanket: yet another layer of _fur_ , heavy and sleek, drawn up all the way to my chin. I’m engulfed in plush, musky warmth. _Ridiculously_ warm.

My companion felt me shiver and brought me another blanket. They’re taking care of me. Keeping me warm.

I tuck my face against a pine needle pillow and smile. I sleep.

* * *

 

 _I dream of a bird – or rather, that I_ am _a bird. A small, drab, brown-black thing, not unlike the blackbirds I made a pie of on my last night at home. It’s sundown in the very dead of winter, and I’m huddled in a crook of a battered apple tree, nosing hopefully with my beak through some nuts and seeds left behind by a squirrel. I find nothing but empty hulls and give a weak chirp in despair. There’s no food to be had, here or elsewhere in the woods. I’ll be dead of cold or hunger before the sun rises._

_I hear a whistle from below – birdlike, yet not a bird – and cock my head at the bizarre creature suddenly standing beneath my tree. The body of a white bear – a young bear – and a human head? No, it’s a boy; a boy dressed in a white bearskin. A strong, stocky boy with pale yellow curls and cheeks turned pink by the cold. His gloved hand proffers a rounded brown object twice my size. He smiles up at me through the branches. His eyes are blue as a winter morning._

_“I’ve brought you food,” he says, and his voice tugs at me strangely. “Please come down.”_

_My small, keen eyes flicker suspiciously between his smiling mouth and the thing in his hand that might be food. The boy is enormous compared to me, and I’m very weak. If I leave my perch and fly down to him, he could break my neck with two fingers. If I trust him, I could die._

_If I don’t trust him, I_ will.

_“I’d never hurt you,” he beseeches softly. “Not ever.”_

_A quick death is better than a slow one, I reason. I shrug my feeble wings and hop from the perch, but I’m too weak to flutter and fall like a blind, featherless hatchling – only to be caught securely in mid-air, cupped in the boy’s gloved palm. I wait for his fingers to close around me, to crush my hollow body or twist my neck, but he only smiles the wider – he seems almost ridiculous with delight. “Hello there,” he says, as the townsfolk do to their old friends. “Would you like some bread?”_

_He crumbles a bit of the brown thing and sprinkles it in front of me, along the heel of his hand. It’s faintly charred, like the branches the coal miner burns for heat in the little house by the lake, but it smells good. Like autumn’s bounty and the pleasant decay of bright leaves beneath its last burst of sun. I peck curiously at the crumbs. There are bits of nuts – rich, nourishing nut-meats – and small brown fruits, shriveled but very sweet, and in-between are tiny flecks of something new but warm and hearty – is that bread? The thing the boy mentioned? He smells of it, I realize. Of the food in his hand, and of bear._

_The boy makes no move to stop me from eating more and, ravenous now, I snap up bite after bite, beating the pieces that are too big against his palm to make them smaller. He laughs, a gentle rumbling sound, and rubs the too-large pieces between his fingers, breaking them down for me. I feast on burned bread with nuts and raisins from the blond boy’s hand. It fills me with warmth and wholeness and life._

_And then, as dreams go, I am in a new place – a strange place, dark and impossibly warm. I’m surrounded by thick fur and the smell of bear, and there’s a resonant thumping against my whole body, the double-beat of a slow drum. For a moment I’m sure I’ve been eaten – maybe the boy really_ was _a bear – and then I realize: no, I’m wrapped inside his bearskin coat, and the thumping is his heart. Larger and louder than my own, and so steady._

_I poke my head through a space between two of the coat’s closures and peer out. It’s evening in the woods now and snowing, and the cold is softer – lovely, even. I see lights – the lights of a human dwelling – far ahead, and I realize the boy came a long way to find me. To find a plain little bird and give her precious, lifesaving food. I wonder why he would do such a thing, and where he might be taking me._

_He chuckles and strokes my head with a fingertip, tucking me back inside his coat. “In with you,” he teases. “We’re nearly there.”_

_And we are, for time moves swiftly in dreams, and the boy takes me inside a house bigger than a whole thicket of trees. A house of wood and stone, smelling of pine and spices and bread. He sheds his fur coat and gloves, then smiles down at me as he carries me with him, cupped to his chest, into a room the color of sunset, all oranges and golds. He sets me on a ledge of amber beside an enormous steaming copper box, and I watch in wonder as he prepares food. Baked pumpkin shells, crisp tidbits of apple, and all kinds of nuts and seeds. The boy chops the nuts finely and I scuttle back a ways, half-afraid I’ll be the next part of the meal to meet the knife, but he sets aside the blade when he’s finished to scoop up the chopped nuts in one big hand. He tosses them, along with the tiny seeds, into a long-handled pan on the steaming box and begins to shake them about._

_I’m too small to see why he’s doing this, and I flutter – successfully this time – to perch on the boy’s shoulder. He chuckles and turns his head to smile at me – his face is frighteningly large up close, and I skitter back to settle behind his ear. I decide I like that place very much. His pulse beats strong and steady beneath his warm skin, and I comb my beak through his pale hair, half-curious and half-preening – though why I should preen a human boy, I can hardly imagine. His light yellow curls are as soft as my own down and very thick. They would make a fine lining for a nest._

_He tosses the nut-meats and seeds till they turn golden-brown, raising a delicious aroma, then he collects the food on one large platter and carries it to a table. I know tables from looking in windows; humans eat at them. I wonder if this kind boy will let me eat here too._

_To my surprise, he sets the platter on the table, then brings a hand to his shoulder to coax me down. “Food for you,” he says, indicating the platter with his other hand. “As much as you want.”_

_I hop onto his hand – the skin is warm and pliant beneath my feet; it feels nicer, somehow, than his glove – and he lifts me down to the platter. “As much as you want,” he says again, encouragingly this time, as he sits._

_I’m no longer starving but still I devour, hopping across the platter to try first one food, then another. The boy has chopped the apples and nuts into pieces perfectly-sized for my small beak, and the pumpkin flesh is tender. I can simply peck it up, a beak full at a time. The boy brings me bread crumbs – soft and pale this time – and a little bowl of water too, and I drink a little before hopping into the bowl and splashing happily._

_The boy laughs. I like his laugh very much and want to hear it often. I splash more and chirp out a merry little phrase._

_The boy stops laughing. He stares at me the way the coal miner stares at his pretty blonde wife when she pushes back a lock of hair that’s escaped her braid. The way she looks at him before their mouths touch._

_“You’re magnificent,” he whispers._

_And then the table is empty and the boy is telling me, “Come, I have a place for you.” He holds out a hand for me to climb onto once more._

_He’s been so kind – impossibly kind – but I know about places for birds. A cage, or a bucket with holes punched in its lid. No more fresh air, no more woods and lake. I scuttle backward, away from his hand. The boy looks sad for a moment, then he smiles ever so slightly and walks out of the room._

_I follow him, of course, but cautiously and at a distance. I fly a little to catch up, then flutter to the ground and hop along silently behind him. The grass is very deep in his house, thick and cloyingly soft and strange in color. The boy comes to a terraced hill made of many, many steps, all covered with the same dense grass, and begins to climb. I can’t hop up all those steps, so I wait for him to reach the top, then fly up after him._

_He disappears into a room – to get the cage, I’m sure – and I flutter down to the ground again. I hop along in the shadows at the base of the wall, curious in spite of myself, and give a startled cry when the boy’s head pops around the corner, almost at my level. “Well, are you coming?” he teases. He stretches out a hand for me, and this time I perch on it and let him carry me into the room._

_The boy has brought the woods indoors. The room he carries me into is made of trees and craggy rocks and fur and smells just like the forest. Like pine sap and woodsmoke and the musk of thick winter fur. “I made this place for you,” the boy says softly. “Do you like it?”_

_Who would do this for one drab little bird? Who would craft the woods inside four sturdy walls, solely for the comfort of a small, wild creature?_

_I could live here forever._

_The room is centered around a huge rectangle of dark wood and fur – a bed, I think. Humans sleep in them, kiss and gasp and embrace in them. The boy sets me on a cushion, fragrant with pine needles, near the top of the bed and tugs up a fur cover to tuck around me – making me a nest, of sorts._

_Then the room is dark, lit only by firelight, and the boy is gone – or is he? I hear soft human sounds in the darkness, feel the bed shift slightly. I ruffle my feathers and try to bed down in the fur, but I feel restless, as though something’s missing._

_The boy._

_He’s a part of this – of baked pumpkin and roasted nuts, of laughter and bath bowls and fires that warm but don’t burn. He’s a part of_ me _now,_ _like a bone or a blood feather. Something I can no longer live without. I push out of the fur and hop across the broad expanse of the bed._

_The boy is lying on the opposite side, seemingly asleep, his eyes closed and an arm thrown above his head, and I climb up the fur cover to reach his chest. The cover stops just above his waist and he’s bare beneath it; my small clawed feet meet warm tender skin and fine pale hair as I walk up his body, but it feels right, somehow. Good. I wear only my skin and feathers, after all; it’s natural that the boy should be likewise, at least in slumber._

_I stare at his face for a moment, then bend to rub my head against his chest, just over his heart. I hardly know why. I tell myself it’s to get his attention, and it succeeds. His eyes flutter open, their thick pale fringes glinting in the firelight. “What was that for?” he whispers._

I like you, _my tiny heart clamors._ I like this place. I belong with you. _But I’m a bird, and the only sounds to leave me are quiet, confused chirrups._

_The boy gives me a sad smile. “Me too,” he answers softly. He lifts a hand and strokes my cheek with a gentle fingertip, making me close my eyes. It feels exquisite._

_I walk up a little further and settle into the hollow of his throat, ruffling my feathers once more and tucking my head under my wing. The boy’s skin is even warmer than the fur cover, and his pulse beats like a gentle drum against my belly._

_He sighs deeply, and his breath fans my back like the first breeze of summer. “Welcome home, Katniss,” he murmurs. His hand rests over me, cocooning me all around with the warmth of his flesh._

Home, _I think._ _Fruit. Seeds. Warmth. Nestlings._

Nestlings?

_I think of how fine a mate this boy would be, with his big gentle hands, soft voice, and warm skin. This one would have no trouble feeding his chicks, lulling them to sleep, or keeping them warm._

_I think of a nest woven of apple twigs and pine needles and supple willow vines, lined with tufts of white bear’s fur and locks of soft yellow hair. I think of two speckled eggs nestled within, pillowed upon dandelion petals and downy willow catkins, and of a mate who would cradle them against his heart._

_I sleep._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The “old folk song” that Katniss recalls her father singing is “Whispering Pines,” made famous by country/rockabilly musician Johnny Horton (1925-1960). Sometimes called “The Singing Fisherman,” Johnny (whose middle name, incidentally, was Gale ;D) is a major inspiration behind my version of Mr. Everdeen, particularly in regard to his singing voice. If you’re curious what Mr. Everdeen sounds like in my head, definitely give Johnny a listen (especially “Whispering Pines,” “All for the Love of a Girl,” and/or the haunting “When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)”) – and if you have the chance, check out his Live Recordings from the Louisiana Hayride. There’s some amusing banter with the host throughout, and Johnny tells a story about fishing that is (my) Mr. Everdeen all over the place. :D
> 
> If anyone cares, my mental image of Katniss-as-a-bird in the dream sequence was the same black-billed nightingale-thrush that Faramir!Peeta was picturing when he called her dúlinn in my LOTR/THG crossover, “The Steward and The Bow-Maiden.” (Said dream sequence is also a very delicate nod to Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale.” :D) I’ll link to a pic in my profile if you care to see.
> 
> Finally, please check out SythiaSkyfire’s exquisite fan-poem, inspired by When the Moon!:
> 
> Stranger, stranger, in the night,  
> Almost silent - but not quite.  
> Once a moan and once a sigh,  
> Did your words bid you goodbye?  
> Tell me, for I want to know,  
> What do you seek? Where do you go?  
> You long for something, I can tell,  
> So throw a wish inside a well.  
> Gaze upon a shooting star,  
> I hope your wish will take you far.  
> Stranger, stranger, in my bed,  
> The sheets are warm, you fill my head.  
> I shake a little in my fright,  
> But even so, my dear, goodnight.  
> ~SythiaSkyfire


	10. The Moon is a Huntress

_When she saw that no harm was meant to her, she fell asleep,  
__and, strangely, she dreamt of a handsome prince.  
_ ~ _East of the Sun & West of the Moon_, retold by László Gál

*** 

_“We look at these old tales and they are survival tools._   
_We can remember how Ashpet did it or Mutsmag or even Jack,_   
_and in times of loneliness and desperation we have something to hang on to.”_   
_~Anndrena Belcher, Appalachian storyteller and artist_

 

I wake in darkness, exquisitely warm and peculiarly _happy_. I dreamt something last night, something long and elaborate and wonderful, but at this moment, all I can recall of it are strange, beautiful flashes. Snow. Fur. Baked pumpkin and roasted nuts; the most delicious things I’d ever eaten. A boy’s hand filled with breadcrumbs. Soft yellow curls. My body, small and – _feathered?_ – resonating with another’s heartbeat. Two speckled eggs in a nest lined with dandelion petals and willow catkins.

The blankets are tucked around me in clear indication that my night visitor has gone, but I knew I was alone before I opened my eyes. The other side of the bed is silent and still.

Feeling very bold, I loosen the covers and inch toward the opposite side of the bed, just a little. Just enough to stretch a hand into the place where my companion had lain. The sheets are smooth and taut against my fingers – as always, they’ve left their side of the bed neatly made – but the mattress still holds a whisper of body heat. I smile and splay my fingers over the patch of warmth, savoring the stolen pleasure. The gift they didn’t realize they’d left behind.

 _Thank you_ , I tell them silently, smiling a little. _For warmth beneath my covers. For sweet sleep and very good dreams. For an extra blanket and taking such care with my family’s book._

That much I remember clearly. My visitor easing the plant book from my arms after I fell asleep holding it. A gentle touch to my cheek, brushing back a lock of hair, and a sigh. The creak of a trunk hinge and the welcome weight of another blanket – another _fur_ – simply because they’d felt me shiver.

My utter stupidity in imagining I could repay Peeta’s kindness by offering him my body.

I groan and roll back to my own side of the bed, covering my face with my hands. That much I really wish _hadn’t_ happened, but as I’d never actually made the “offer” – I thank my nerves fervently for that – surely there’s been no harm done. And there are plenty of other ways – better, less awkward ways – to pay Peeta back. Starting now.

It’s so dark outside my windows that it could be anytime between midnight and 5:00 in the morning, but judging by the low-burning fire in my hearth, where nearly all of last night’s wood has been reduced to ash, it must be closer to morning than night. Morning means breakfast and breakfast I can do. Peeta told me I didn’t need to cook for him, but he never said I couldn’t.

I toss back the heavy layers of fur, slip out of bed, and find my slippers in front of the fire. There are no clothes laid out on the warming rack, so Lavinia must not be awake yet. I’m plenty early for breakfast, then.

I slip down the stairs in darkness, still wearing my nightgown and Prim’s sweater, buttoned over my ribs. I’d never let Peeta see me like this, but I’m only cooking right now. There’s no point in getting dressed for that, not at this hour. I can have his breakfast on the table and be dressed for the day before he realizes I’ve left my bed.

My hunter’s senses catch on immediately – the cozy, enticing aromas of freshly brewed coffee and yeasty dough; a shaft of warm golden light coming from the kitchen doorway – but, fixed as I am on this idea of making breakfast, I walk in blindly and stumble back as though I’ve crashed into a wall.

Peeta stands over the kitchen table, now sprinkled edge to edge with flour, working a large lump of dough with his strong hands. He wears the same trousers as yesterday and a thin white undershirt, with an apron folded down and tied at his waist.

His curly hair is mussed from sleep – _endearingly so,_ whispers a voice in my head. He’d look like a drowsy little boy, dragged too early from his bed, were it not for the broad span of his chest, its contours clearly visible beneath the cotton of his undershirt, and the muscles of his forearms, bunching with each stroke of his kneading hands.

He hasn’t showered yet, and it startles me that I’ve noticed. His forearms are dusted with flour, drawing the eye to his district token – the strip of red cloth – tied at his left wrist. I realize with a funny lurch in my chest that he must wear it _all_ the time, even when he sleeps.

I make a little sound of surprise and he looks up, his blue eyes wide. “Katniss,” he says, an exclamation in a sleep-roughened voice, abandoning the dough to come over to me. “Is everything all right?” he asks. “Can’t you sleep?”

He’s looking at me strangely, and I remember I’m still in my nightgown: pretty, lightweight cotton over my hollow, scrawny body. Prim’s sweater covers the worst of it – my arms and torso, so horribly thin that even _I_ shuddered at the sight – but my downy bird-legs are exposed from the knees down.

“No,” I lie, suddenly cross. _Stupid Katniss – to think you could be up before a baker’s son!_ I can hardly offer to make breakfast _now_ , and even if I did, he would pleasantly tell me there was no need and start cooking for _me_. There’s nothing for me to do here, and I’ve made myself look like an idiot twice over. Once for showing up like this and once for doing so in this ridiculous nightgown, in which Peeta was never, _ever_ supposed to see me.

I’m debating whether it would be worse to elaborate on the lie about not being able to sleep or just run back upstairs when he raises a hand and brushes my cheek with the backs of his floury fingers. “I’m sorry,” he says gently, his eyes soft and sympathetic. “I know how that is. It’s hard for me too sometimes, since the Games.”

He smells like sleep, like rumpled quilts and warm sheets and the musk of a dormant body, and I feel an almost overwhelming urge to move closer, to wrap my arms around his waist and tuck my face into the curve of his neck. I can’t imagine why, but my body’s telling me that Peeta would be wonderful to curl up with, so fiercely that I feel it like a prod between my shoulder blades, nudging me toward him.

I push back against it and sway a little on my feet, and Peeta forgets the state of his hands to steady my shoulders. “Hey,” he says softly, and the scent of his breath only makes the urge stronger. It’s stale and a little tangy, like anyone’s first thing in the morning, and yet oddly not unpleasant. I wonder madly how it would feel to wake to that breath on my face, to taste it on my lips before I open my eyes.

“Come sit with me,” he offers, guiding me into a chair. “I’ll make you something that always helps me sleep.”

Between the drowsy allure of Peeta’s body and the coziness of the kitchen, reclaiming sleep is not going to be a problem.

I draw my knees up to my chin, wrapping the nightgown around as much of me as I can, and watch as he assembles ingredients for a hot drink. It almost looks like the hot chocolate he made on my first night here, except he’s using the ground _white_ chocolate, scoop after luscious scoop of it, whisked into a tiny kettle with cream and honey, and instead of spices he adds, to my surprise, a splash of chamomile tea.

“Here,” he says at last, handing me the bowl-sized mug, now filled to its brim with a creamy concoction that smells of floral honey, chamomile, and sheer bliss. “How’s that?”

I take a long sip and give an embarrassingly ardent moan as white chocolate and warm frothed sweet cream flood my mouth. “Oh yes,” I tell him, smacking my lips a little. “That’s _perfect_.”

He returns to his dough, his cheeks stained a hot scarlet, and I savor sip after rapturous sip as I watch him, my chin nested between my knees. The rhythm of his kneading is hypnotic, even beautiful. I sigh as the heels of his strong hands press steadily deeper and deeper into the dough and attribute the peculiar tingling warmth in my belly to the pint of white chocolate that I’m drinking.

“What are you making?” I yawn after a few minutes, setting down the mug – _for just one moment,_ I promise myself.

“Not bread, little snoop,” he teases, grinning up at me from the dough. “It’s a surprise.”

“Okay,” I reply, yawning wider, and fold my arms atop my knees to create a pillow for my face.

I think he asks how I’d like my eggs, but by then I’m firmly in the clutches of delicious slumber. 

* * *

 _It’s dark and pleasant and warm,_ so _warm, on one side of my body. I’m_ _cradled_ _in warmth – lying in a cradle, I think, its edges firm against my back and under my knees. It’s too small a bed for me yet not at all uncomfortable. It rocks me gently as I hum and sigh and coo like a happy baby._

 _After a little the cradle stops swaying and tips forward, but I don’t want to get out, so I press back against its lone wall and reach up to the edge to hold myself inside. The wood is warm and solid beneath my fingers but pliant, somehow – comfortable to lean against. I shift my hold on the cradle’s edge and my fingers brush something soft, like feathers or fur, and burrow themselves greedily into it. I nestle my face against the warm cradle wall and breathe in musk and bread and_ sleep _._

_The cradle sighs in return – groans, almost, as wood does sometimes beneath an impossible weight – and stops trying to tip me out. It stops rocking too and sinks down a little, as though before it had swayed in a tree and now it descends to solid ground. I don’t mind the change at all. It feels even nicer, for now there’s warmth in the bed of the cradle as well, beneath my backside._

_I tuck in my legs and the cradle obliges, lengthening at one end to accommodate them. Firm warmth now encircles me on all sides – a nest, I wonder, and not a cradle? – and I sink into deeper, somehow_ more _blissful sleep._

_I dream a little then, vague but pleasant things. Soft caresses running the length of my cheek and throat, now and again drifting back to trace the curve of my earlobe as well. A gentle comb running through my hair, over and over again. I like all of this very much and nuzzle my cradle-nest contentedly, sighing with pleasure, in hopes of showing my appreciation, and feel a puff of warm breeze against my forehead._

_"So beautiful,” it sighs, but I feel more than hear the words, a whisper against my brow and resonant hum beneath my cheek._

_I_ _smile against the cradle wall._ I like this place, _I think._ I belong here. I belong with you.

* * *

When I wake, it’s quite light – well past sunrise – and snowing; thick feathery flakes falling lazily outside the enormous window opposite me. I’m deliciously, _impossibly_ warm; literally _cocooned_ , chin to toes, in plush silky-soft warmth.

I look down at my body, blinking bleary eyes, to discover that I’m lying on the sofa, covered with Peeta’s bearskin. No, not covered: wrapped up in it, as though someone spread the coat flat, then laid me down at its center and swaddled me up in the fur like a baby. The hem has even been tucked up to enclose my feet.

My head rests on a feather pillow, or maybe two of them, and I turn just enough to see that their cases are a coppery shade of orange. Peeta’s pillows, from his sunset-hued bedroom.

“Good morning,” says Peeta’s voice pleasantly, from very near. “I hope you’re hungry. I heard a rumor that Dad made bacon for your mom and sister and was not about to be outdone.”

I look up, thoroughly confused, to find him sitting on the low table near my feet, a tray of food on his lap. “Hi,” he says shyly as our eyes meet, giving me a small smile. “I brought you breakfast.”

He’s freshly showered since I saw him last. The heady scent of his soap – of honey, cream, and cloves – is almost overwhelming, and his hair is still dark and damp at the roots, though the ashy curls have dried to soft, plump ringlets. He wears the evergreen sweater and brown corduroys from the night he brought me here and accordingly looks almost a fixture of his living room with its mossy carpet, dark wood, and earthy tweed.

“W-what happened?” I mumble, the words refusing to come quickly to my still-drowsy lips. “How did I get here?”

I should be crosser, finding myself at such a loss, and yet everything – the snow, the mouthwatering smells coming from the tray, the double-layer of thick white fur wrapped around my entire body; even Peeta, sitting there so sweet and patiently – feels unhurried and comfortable and _perfect_ , even dreamlike. I’m not sure anything could anger me at this moment.

“You fell asleep,” he says, almost apologetically, “at the table, and…I didn’t think you’d be all that comfortable sleeping there, so, um…” He trails off, cheeks pinking a little, and my own face grows warm in turn as I realize what must have happened.

“So you…brought me in here and covered me up?” I guess, pushing resolutely past my embarrassment. Peeta’s certainly strong enough to carry me like a child. I try to imagine being held in his arms, even for something as practical as this, and tremble a little, remembering how warm and _good_ it had been in the sleigh three nights ago, curled up beneath his bearskin, my cheek an inch from the sweater he wears now.

He bites his lip. “Eventually,” he says, avoiding my eyes. His face has gone a painful shade of pink and I can’t think why – and then, in a rush of horror, I understand all too well.

My dream cradle, holding me so securely and gentle. Its solid warmth and sighs; its whispered words and careful caresses.

I’m looking at it. At the warm, pliant wood of strong arms and a broad chest…the feathers of thick curly hair…the scents of bread and body-musk that had drawn me even when I was awake, so fiercely that I’d almost fallen against him.

“ _Oh!_ ” I cry, my face blazing so hot that my vision blurs a little. I would run from the room but I’m swaddled in heavy fur, so snugly that I can barely move. I give a mortified little sob and bury my face in my hands, willing myself to disappear.

“Katniss,” he says, his voice slightly strangled. “I really didn’t mind.”

I peer out between my fingertips. Peeta’s as red as I feel, but he’s giving me a shaky smile that goes a long way toward making what I did forgivable.

“You were tired and cold,” he explains. “And…it seemed to help – to make you happier – when….when I was holding you,” he finishes hoarsely, his eyes on the tray in his lap.

I remember how I held onto him, refusing to let him lay me down. “How long?” I croak. “How long did you have to sit here…with me?”

He looks up quickly. “There was no ‘have to’ about it,” he assures me through his blush. “I want you to be warm and happy and comfortable – _always._ And for half an hour this morning, that meant sitting by the fire and holding you while you slept,” he says quietly. “There are much worse ways to spend a half-hour,” he adds with a ragged laugh.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. Whatever Peeta says to the contrary, he’s a rich young man with _much_ better things to do than hold me while I sleep – or, for that matter, wrap me up in his precious bearskin, put his own pillows beneath my head, and make me breakfast. I know he’s kind and generous but this is ridiculous; backwards and wrong. He should have just woken me up and sent me upstairs – or better yet, given me work to do. “You didn’t have to do this,” I tell him. “Any of it.”

“I know,” he says with a sad little smile. “Would you believe me if I said I wanted to?”

“No,” I answer frankly, and to my surprise, he laughs.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he says, and sighs. “Not now, at least. But I hope you’ll eat with me anyway?”

He scoots down the table a little and I get a closer look at the heaping plates of food on the tray. The bacon draws my eyes first – I’ve been hungry for too much of my life to _not_ look for meat before anything else – and my mouth waters greedily at the pile of savory curls, streaked with brown and gold. I’ve seen bacon, even smelled it, a dozen times before but never enjoyed so much as a bite of it.

Next are rolls of some kind – a basketful, each one as big as my fist – with buttery golden tops; potatoes, cubed and fried crisp; pale slices of apple, drizzled with honey; and a plate of fried eggs, the whites steaming and taut over bubbles of bright yolk. There’s a stout coffee pot with a dizzyingly rich scent – _cream!_ I plead silently – drifting from its spout, a dish of butter, and Peeta’s salt shaker and pepper mill, standing alongside a neat stack of mugs and forks and pine-patterned plates, awaiting use.

“Of course I’ll eat with you,” I say, a little overcome, as always, by the meal before me, and am rewarded by a smile so brilliant that it leaves me momentarily breathless.

“I hope you like eggs this way,” Peeta says cheerfully as he begins to fill a plate for me. “It’s kind of an old joke at home: baker’s kids eat soft eggs because that’s all we have time for. We’re up so early and busy right away; you can only stop for a few minutes of frying, and then you sop up the yolk with your toast as you go back to work.”

My mind fills with images of a small chubby Peeta with flour-dusted curls, bolting down bites of eggy toast, and I chuckle at the thought. “Dad used to say Seam kids eat their eggs soft because they’re too hungry to wait any longer,” I tell him. “But they’re so good this way –”

“You wonder why anyone would fry them till the yolks were solid,” he finishes for me with a grin. “Would you like salt and pepper?”

Peeta seems perfectly content to serve breakfast right here – to feed me on the sofa, no less – but I can hardly eat eggs and bacon while wrapped chin to toes in his precious white fur. I carefully unwrap the layers of bearskin from around my body, only to gasp and sit up quickly once I’m uncovered, draping the fur across my legs. I’d forgotten what I was wearing when I came downstairs this morning, and the hem of my flimsy nightgown crept well above my knees as I shifted on the sofa, baring my legs to mid-thigh.

“It’s okay, you know,” Peeta says, his voice tight and a little choked. His eyes are fixed on the bacon as he carefully places strip after strip on my plate. “I mean – I won’t look, but – I _did_ see your legs earlier,” he stammers, “when I, um, brought you in here, and they’re…well, they’re beautiful,” he finishes in a breathy rush.

“They are _not_ ,” I retort, though it comes out closer to a whisper, and press the bearskin protectively against my thighs. “Don’t make fun of me.”

I know he doesn’t mean to, of course. He’s trying to make me feel better, but what he’s saying is just plain absurd.

“I never would, and they _are_ ,” he persists, looking up at me. His bright eyes are almost fierce, though his lips curve in a careful smile. “I held you for a half-hour, remember?” he says gently.

I recall the rest then and look away, mortified, thinking of Peeta’s arm beneath my bare legs as he carried me and then around them as I tucked my feet inside what I thought was a cradle. I remember muscle and warm skin supporting my knees, then curving across my shins, holding me snugly, and realize that Peeta must have still been in his undershirt then, bare-armed and unshowered and rumpled with sleep. No wonder my body had clung to him; nestling so deeply into his drowsy warmth.

I burn with shame at the thought. Peeta is, at the very least, my host, and I burrowed so insistently into his arms that he had to hold me for _half an hour_. He can’t have wanted to _touch_ me more than was necessary to move me to the sofa and tuck me in.

And yet he has the nerve – or perhaps the kindness – to sit across from me with a tray of food that almost brings tears to my eyes and tell me that my downy bird-legs are _beautiful_.

 _So beautiful,_ echoes a whisper in my mind, brushing my brow like a summer breeze as I sleep in my “cradle.” The memory is bookended by countless little tender touches: warm fingers combing through my hair, then caressing my cheek, my throat, the curve of my ear; over and over again.

My heart gives a lurching double-beat. That part I _know_ was a dream, and it mortifies me that my sleeping mind could conjure such fantasies. Peeta has shown himself to be overwhelmingly considerate, and even holding someone while they sleep isn’t wholly unthinkable for the kind of person he is. But what I’m remembering are lover’s caresses, of the sort my parents used to exchange; a touch as much for the giver’s pleasure as the recipient’s. Peeta’s certainly not in love with me, and the idea of him touching me in such a fashion is beyond ridiculous. 

“Did…did you mind?” Peeta asks hesitantly, causing me to look up. “That I held…that I brought you in here?” His cheerful expression has vanished, supplanted by something halfway between worry and apology. “I didn’t – I wanted you to be comfortable, is all,” he says. “It was starting to snow then, and I thought it might be nice to wake up in here, with the fireplace and the big windows, and you’d be close to the kitchen in case you got hungry.” He frowns, his eyes returning to the food. “I suppose I could have put you back in bed,” he says.

“No,” I assure him quickly. That he brought me in here is unbelievable enough, albeit understandable – sweet, even, in light of his logic. The idea of him carrying me up all those stairs on his prosthetic leg, turning back my covers, and tucking me in bed is preposterous. “This was fine,” I tell him. “Too much, really.”

“Well, I _did_ promise you too much of everything for the rest of your life,” he replies with a grin. The words are teasing but his eyes are not. “And on that note: I hope you like your bread this morning,” he says with merry aplomb, crowning my full plate with two of the huge golden rolls. “I’ve been planning these for a long time, and you almost spoiled the surprise.”

He hands me the plate with a nervous chuckle – apparently he really _is_ anxious for me to try the rolls – and I obediently take a bite of one right away…and feel my knees melt against the edge of the sofa. It’s a savory bun, deftly seasoned with half a dozen herbs – no single one is overpowering or even dominant – and scattered with tiny pockets of sharp yellow cheese. “Cheese buns,” I breathe.

I know about Mellarks’ cheese buns, though of course I’ve never eaten one. I’ve stood at the back door of the bakery countless times, trading one plump squirrel (or two scrawny ones) for two loaves of the cheapest bread as steaming clouds of butter, savory herbs, and cheese wafted out to tantalize my nose and belly. Peeta’s father would have traded me cheese buns instead – would have traded me almost _anything_ , I think – but my bargains had to be more practical than that. Two loaves of coarse dark bread – far more nourishing than the flaky, golden-crusted Merchant fare and much tastier than my homemade tessera bread – fed us heartily for an entire week. The same two squirrels would have bought me just two cheese buns, and even stinting on the portions, they wouldn’t have lasted my family more than two days.

And Peeta just gave me two cheese buns like they’re no more precious than pebbles. “That’s right,” he says, almost a whisper. “Do you like them?”

“No,” I tell him plainly, licking the buttery residue from my lips. “I _love_ them.” To prove my point I devour the rest of the bun in three eager bites and feel a rush of something fluttery enveloping my heart at Peeta’s resulting expression. He looks amused, delighted, and pleasantly surprised all at once.

“I hoped you would,” he says, his cheeks faintly pink. “They’re one of my favorites – one of the first things I begged Dad to teach me. Of course, I rarely got to eat them at home,” he admits, “but they’re kind of a staple now that I’m on my own. I like to dip them in hot chocolate,” he says, his blush deepening.

My eyes go to the stovepot in spite of myself, and even though I know it’s far too much to expect, I ask, “Is that what you made to drink? Hot chocolate?”

Peeta looks crestfallen. “Would you like me to?” he asks, as though he’d get up here and now and make something that isn’t part of the feast he prepared, just because I wanted it. “I’m sorry to say I finished your drink after you fell asleep,” he confesses, “and this is coffee.” He takes the handle of the stout pot in one hand and lifts it a little, demonstratively. “Coffee with lots of honey and frothed cream,” he adds, but his heart clearly isn’t in it. “I thought, since you liked the cream-coffee so well last night, but…”

I bite back a moan at the thought of last night’s coffee concoction; the most perfect thing I’ve ever had to drink in my life. “That,” I tell him, setting my hand on his on the pot handle, “sounds _wonderful_. I’d love a cup.”

“You’re sure?” he says dubiously. His hand is tense under mine. “If you’d rather have hot chocolate –”

“I want what you made for me,” I assert, and blush a little at the force in my tone. “Everything you make is perfect – _always_ – and goes perfectly with whatever else you’re serving.”

Peeta flushes crimson, but it’s an expression of pride this time, not shame. “Okay,” he concedes, taking my battered little mug from the tray and filling it to the brim with a creamy pale brown liquid. “But I’ll make you hot chocolate next time.”

I take a long drink from the proffered cup and give a whimper of raw pleasure. It’s every bit as good as the coffee he made last night; maybe even _better_ , in its own way. The honey and cream smooth the edges of the coffee without taking away its flavor, creating a beverage that I can only describe as tasting like autumn. Robust and creamy with an echo of summer clover in the honey, I think I could drink this every day for the rest of my life.

I tell Peeta as much and he laughs. “I’d better order extra cream from town, then,” he teases, pouring a modest cup for himself. “It’ll be worth every drop to see you this happy.”

I lower my eyes, confused at the clear affection in his voice. I can’t think why my happiness should matter so much to him, let alone that he’d go to such lengths to ensure it. What’s more, I can’t stop thinking about him finishing my drink from earlier this morning. I imagine he didn’t want to waste it, as I did with his tea the night he came to the Seam to strike our bargain, and yet it feels familial, almost loverlike, to think of his mouth where mine had been. In the past two days we’ve shared a ginger cake with custard and a bowl of snow ice cream and laughed as our greedy spoons met in the middle; why should sharing a drink be so different, so _intimate_?

I resolutely direct my attention back to the food on my plate. The potatoes, fried with their skins on, are startlingly flavorful, even a little spicy; I taste black pepper, mustard seed, and a hint of shallots. And the bacon is a hundred times better than I could ever have imagined. Its crispness crumbles on my tongue, melting in my mouth, and draws a groan from deep in my throat. “This is _amazing_ , Peeta,” I moan, almost in tears from the savory saltiness seducing my taste buds, and give a broken little laugh as he heaps even more bacon onto my plate.

“Have all you want,” he urges. “If this isn’t enough, I’ll make more. Just say the word.”

It occurs to me after my sixth or so voracious bite that the doughy cheese buns and crispy bacon might make for a tasty combination, and I carefully tear my third bun in half and stuff it full of crumbling fragments of bacon before taking a hearty bite. The resulting sandwich might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. “ _This_ ,” I tell Peeta emphatically through a delicious mouthful, lifting the cheese bun in both hands. “Can I maybe have these again sometime?”

“You can have them every day if you want,” he assures me with a smile. “With hot chocolate _and_ cream-coffee.”

I remember the eggs at last and giddily pop the yolk-bubbles with my fork – something I haven’t done in a very long time – and chase the sunny yellow puddles across my plate with the stub of my cheese bun sandwich till Peeta laughs and takes pity on me, putting a fresh cheese bun on my plate. When I’ve eaten all the rich food I can hold, I finish up with the honey-drizzled apple slices and so much cream-coffee that I feel like a yolk-bubble myself, primed to pop at the gentlest poke.

I look down at my empty plate, my nearly-empty mug, the white bearskin draped across my lap. “Peeta,” I sigh, “you didn’t have to do this, you know. Any of this.”

“I’m more than happy to do it, you know,” he replies in kind, with a grin, as he takes the dishes from me. “And, well…” His blush returns without warning, rosy splashes across his cheekbones. “I wanted to ask if you’d do something for me,” he confesses, “and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to butter you up first.” His grin broadens at that and he gives me a playful wink.

“Do something?” I echo, at once eager and anxious. Between the extra-long sleep and the fur and the delicious breakfast, I’ve managed to forget what I resolved last night, and again this morning: to find ways of paying Peeta back for all his generosity toward me. I knew this was coming soon and am glad of it, even a little relieved, but I can’t help wondering why he waited till now to ask me – and _what_ he intends to ask me. “You mean, like chores?” I ask him.

Peeta shrugs. “Not a chore…as such,” he says haltingly, as though nervous all of a sudden. “I, um…I kind of hoped you might _enjoy_ it.”

I know better – _far_ better, after last night – yet still my mind makes the same panicked leap it’s made every night since I arrived: Peeta wants me to sleep with him. That explains his nervousness, his hope that what he means to ask will be more pleasure than duty. _Does he want it here and now?_ I wonder, fighting the tremors as my gorged stomach twists into a painful knot. _Is this how it happens? On his sofa, with me in a pretty nightgown and his bearskin thrown over us both?_

“After the Games, the Capitol thought of me as some kind of hunter,” he says. “To them, it only made sense for me to choose this house, isolated as it is, in a woods rich with game.”

The words are carefully spoken and make no sense whatsoever, least of all in the context of my fears. I nod slowly, prompting him to continue. “Of course, I’m nothing of the kind, and never have been,” he goes on. “But taking this place came with certain benefits nonetheless. I’m permitted to hunt on my property – though not to obtain weapons,” he adds with a twisted smile. “As a Victor, I’m supposed to have figured ways around that. And as I understand it, the weapons restriction doesn’t apply to tools like hatchets and hammers or to things found – or made – in the woods.”

I stare at him, uncomprehending. “But you don’t hunt,” I say.

“I don’t,” he agrees, his smile now genuine and broadening, “and probably never will. But the rules I just mentioned apply to my household: to _everyone_ who lives here, not just to me. If I want,” he says, slowly and deliberately, “I can designate someone to hunt for me.”

It hits me then, with the force of a bowshot: _I can hunt here._ Up till now, my hunting has been a secret thing – bows hidden in hollow trees, crawl spaces beneath the perimeter fence, back door and black market trades – driven by desperation. I think of selling wild dog’s meat to Greasy Sae to pass off as beef in her stew, of shooting blackbirds to feed my family.

What Peeta is suggesting is something else entirely. Hunting solely to fill our table, not a dozen others’. Hunting to supplement his comfortable larder, not to stock it. Hunting for pleasure, without fear of arrest or consequences, knowing I’ll always come home to a hot meal, whether I find any game or not.

It’s far, _far_ too good to be true. “Peeta,” I rasp, “a-are you saying–?”

“I can employ a hunter, Katniss,” he says softly, smiling. “Or a huntress.”

 _Huntress_. It’s an old-fashioned word; ancient, really. Wildly out of place in any part of Panem and yet perfectly suited to Peeta’s secluded fairytale world of snow and fur and pine. It resonates in my head like distant hoofbeats, like doe’s feet on frozen ground or the heavy pads of wolves in pursuit of her. _Hunt-ress, hunt-ress, hunt-ress…_ The word stirs my blood and makes my fingers itch to heft my bow, to take aim at the swiftest beast in the woods and bring it down with one clean shot.

It’s an especially strange word for Peeta to use, as I doubt he grew up on tales of huntresses. They were my favorite stories to hear and Dad’s favorites to recount, and I loved both heroines equally well: the huntress moon – a slim silver girl with stars in her black hair, nocking an arrow in her crescent of ivory – and Grandma Everdeen. Though I’ve never seen her, not even a photograph, she lopes gracefully through the woods of my mind; a lithe shadow, bow in hand.

Granny Ashpet (Dad always referred to his mother that way, even though she died long before he had children of his own) was the very definition of a huntress. Tall and lean, with long black hair that fell to her hips and – unique for Twelve, let alone for the Seam – eyes the green-gold of a cougar’s, she was fiercely independent and, as Dad told it, a far better hunter than my grandfather. They hunted individually and both traded at the Hob, and Grandpa Asa thought she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, but she wouldn’t give him the time of day.

Grandpa Asa was small – a half-inch shorter than Granny Ashpet – and thin, with a sharp nose and a shock of black hair that refused to lie down for anything. He hunted with snares mostly, and did all right with it. As the story goes, he was foraging in the woods one day when, out of nowhere, Granny Ashpet leapt from a tree to shoot a cougar that he hadn’t realized was stalking him. He thanked her profusely for saving his life and begged her to marry him then and there, but she insisted she’d only shot the animal for the meat and pelt and didn’t care two pins for _him_ , thank you very much.

 _It was another long year before she agreed to be his wife,_ Dad told me with a laugh. _Papa said it was like wooing a doe and a cougar and a porcupine in turns. You never knew whether_ you _were hunting_ her _or_ she _was hunting_ you _– or what to do once you caught her. She might snap off your hand or slip your snare and run a mile – and she was quick as a hare to boot!_

Dad always said I was very like Granny Ashpet. Shorter, of course, thanks to her husband, but otherwise much the same in looks. _That’s her chin,_ he’d tease whenever I scowled. When I wore just the right shade of green, he said I even had her eyes. I’ve always known that I wasn’t pretty, but being compared, even fleetingly, to strong, beautiful Granny Ashpet was the highest praise in the world.

“Will you?”

Peeta’s voice breaks quietly into my thoughts and I look up in surprise, focusing slowly on his face. His smile wavers with uncertainty. “Will you be my huntress, Katniss?” he asks.

At his words, I’m suddenly eleven and knee-deep in snow, bending to retrieve my arrow and the plump rabbit it brought down while Dad looks on with pride. _You’re the spitting image of your granny, catkin,_ he says. _A fine little huntress already, and a beauty before you know it. I’d best start laying snares now for all the suitors who’ll come calling._

 _A fine little huntress,_ echoes Dad’s voice in my head. _Peeta’s huntress,_ a new voice clarifies, and a peculiar, delicious shiver wriggles its way up my spine.

“Yes,” I blurt out, oddly breathless. “I’d love to be your huntress.”

Peeta’s face splits in a smile so wide it makes me wonder if I’ve ever seen him happy before. “Good,” he says, and he sounds as breathless as I feel. “I planned – that is, I _hoped_ – so…I planned some things, and…you can’t imagine how happy this makes me,” he says, leaning forward a little to squeeze my hand.

I chuckle shakily. “I think I _can_ , actually,” I tell him. “Though I don’t quite understand why.”

He blushes a little. “You will soon, I think,” he says. “That is…” He hesitates, catching his lower lip between his teeth. “If you want to hunt today?”

I stand up so quickly that the bearskin pools at my feet. “I’ll go right now,” I tell him, my hands trembling with eagerness. “I just need to change.” And for reasons I don’t quite understand, I _run_ out of the living room and bound up the stairs to my bedroom.

There I find that Lavinia has laid out clothing for me to choose from, like on the past two mornings, only this time it’s a mix of the fine clothes Peeta bought for me and the clothes I brought from home. On one side of the rack are Dad’s thermals, my dark gray corduroys – one of very few things I’ve bought for myself; not a hemmed-up pair of Dad’s – and my favorite sweater, coarsely woven, the dusty green of juniper branches. It was the nicest one Dad owned and one of his favorites to boot. He only ever wore it on Sundays in the woods, and yet it held his scent longer than any other piece of clothing, even after he died. The color turned his ordinary Seam-gray eyes the powdery blue of juniper berries, and Mom caught her breath at the sight every single time. She would take his face in her hands and gaze at him for a long moment, as though he were a rare woodland creature and she only ever saw him truly in the juniper sweater. I think she would have buried him in it, if there had been a body to bury.

I scoop up the sweater out of habit and hold it to my face, breathing deeply. The wool no longer smells of him, of course, but of sweet pine resin and spiced woodsmoke – of my new bedroom in Peeta’s house – and something tells me Dad would be happy about that. I think he’d be happier still for me to wear it while hunting in Peeta’s woods.

Still holding the sweater to my chest, I run my fingers over the other clothing choices, the ones purchased by Peeta. There’s a turtleneck sweater, cut slim, the color of oatmeal and soft as fur to the touch. I take the hem between my fingers, curious, and realize there must be rabbit hair woven into the wool, like in my new stocking cap and scarf, producing a garment that is at once lightweight and wonderfully warm. A surprisingly good choice for hunting, it’s thin enough for layering but warm enough to suffice on its own on a mild winter day.

Beneath the sweater is a pair of canvas trousers, sturdy but supple and, to my surprise, lined with soft flannel. These would be _ideal_ for hunting, especially in snow: the canvas exterior would repel moisture and protect your legs from rough bark, thorny branches, even a wayward claw, while the lining kept you warm. You wouldn’t even need thermals with these, at least on the bottom.

All at once, I wonder if this is a trick question; a trap of some kind. Peeta’s provided clothing perfect for hunting, but he’s a Merchant boy; he can’t have realized all the stains they’ll encounter, like mud and blood and pine sap. I’m a very careful hunter, accustomed to having little and needing to make it last as long as possible, but a few stains are just plain inevitable. Surely it would be better to wear my own clothes and let them suffer the damages?

Then again: Peeta bought these clothes _for me_ , and they’re clearly intended for outdoor wear, maybe expressly for hunting. I could climb a hundred trees in the canvas trousers and not even snag a seam, and come autumn, the turtleneck will be as good as camouflage for disappearing among the trees. He clearly put a lot of thought – and money – into this, and his feelings might be hurt if I choose to wear my own clothes, especially on my very first hunt in his woods.

I give a groan of frustration and settle for something halfway in-between: Dad’s sweater and thermal undershirt paired with the canvas trousers. It’s the best of both worlds – and I really, _really_ want to try out the trousers. They’re slightly oversized, more so than the rest of the clothes Peeta bought me, but I suspect that’s to compensate for the stiffness of the material, and the flannel lining is like a dream against my skin. I rub my knees together with a chuckle, savoring the softness, as I quickly braid my hair.

When I arrive back at the living room, Peeta’s draping my jacket – Dad’s hunting jacket – over the warming rack in front of the fire. My boots are already there: my hunting boots from home, not the pretty suede-and-fleece ones Peeta bought for me.

I’m debating whether he really _does_ know me better than I thought was possible and if I just should sneak back upstairs and put on my corduroys when he turns around and smiles at me. “I knew you’d wear that,” he tells me. “Your dad used to wear it on Sundays when he stopped by the bakery to trade.”

I raise my brows, startled that he would remember such a detail from five years ago. I wonder how he even knew I’d brought this sweater with me – and realize there’s only one logical answer. “ _You_ put the clothes out for me,” I say.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he answers, coloring slightly. “Lavinia slept in this morning. She overdid it yesterday, working on your family’s new house and getting back so late, and I didn’t want you to have cold clothes on this of all mornings.”

I stare at him in disbelief. In the time it took me to wake up twice, Peeta baked cheese buns, cooked a huge breakfast, made two kinds of hot drinks, prepared a bed for me on the sofa – with his own pillows and his precious bearskin – and held me until I’d let him lay me in it, then carefully picked out the best possible clothing for my day and put it on the rack to warm up – and somewhere in there, managed to take a shower and dress himself.

If I’m meant to be a servant here, Peeta’s going about it in the most backward fashion imaginable. “You knew I’d be going hunting?” I ask, the only words I can manage.

“I knew I was going to ask you,” he replies with a crooked grin. “And I figured, even if you said no, you’d want to spend a good portion of the day outside, hence…” He gestures at my clothing. “I, um…I hope I chose all right,” he says, abruptly subdued, as though he’s just realized he may have misstepped.

Except he hasn’t, and I’m fairly sure he _can’t_. “It was perfect,” I assure him, and wonder why it matters so much that I do. “ _Everything._ I…picked some of each because I wasn’t sure –”

“You can wear whatever you want,” he tells me quickly. “Did you think -?”

I shrug. “I wasn’t sure,” I say again. “I…well, I didn’t want to make you upset.”

He gives a strange frustrated laugh and comes forward to take my hands. “Katniss, the only thing that could ever make me upset is you doing something you didn’t want to do or that didn’t make you happy,” he says, giving my fingers an emphatic squeeze. “You can do whatever you want here… _have_ whatever you want,” he adds softly. His voice trembles a little as he stares down at our hands. “Everything in this house belongs to you, remember?”

He looks up then and my heart gives a strange little skip. “That goes for clothes as well, of course,” he tells me, his grin returning. “So if you wanted to, say, wear a dress in the woods –”

I laugh and tug my hands free. I’m surprised at how much my body resists; how badly my hands want to stay nested inside his. “I like your practical choices, thanks,” I reply.

He smiles. “You can wear your new coat and boots if you want, you know,” he says. “I just thought, for the first time or two, you might rather –”

“You thought right,” I say, and wonder why that doesn’t rankle more. I don’t like being known this well, yet somehow with Peeta, it’s a comfort.

And the smile he gives me at moments like this is _beyond_ comfort. It’s like a little sliver of the sun settles in my chest and floods me with bright, radiant warmth, all the way to my fingertips. A warmth at once glorious and almost uncomfortable, as though just a fraction more of it would burst me into flame and consume me like dry tinder.

“I’m glad,” he tells me, beaming. “Your bow and…some things…are in the stable.”

“What would you like for lunch?” I ask, half-teasing. The anticipation of being in the woods soon, of openly hunting Peeta’s rich game, has put me in an unexpectedly playful mood.

“I’ve got lunch started already,” he replies with a wink and hands me a little leather pouch that I hadn’t noticed on the armchair. It’s about a third the size of my foraging bag and packed full, with the neck of a flask peeking around the flap on one side.

“What’s this?” I puzzle, turning it this way and that in my hands.

“A little something to eat,” he says. “I thought: you’ll be enjoying yourself out there, and this way you can stay out as long as you like. You don’t have to come all the way back for lunch – unless you want to, of course.”

The urge to kiss him – to step forward and press my lips to his cheek, just for a second – is almost overwhelming.

Mom did this every Sunday: packed a little lunch – usually a flask of hot tea with coarse bread and honey – for Dad to take on his hunting trips. She knew he loved the woods: the clean air, the freedom, the exhilaration of the hunt, and he only got a few stolen hours of it each week. He could have caught or foraged his own meal, of course, but it was one of the special little things she always did, just for him.

And every single time, he kissed her cheek as she pressed the lunch parcel into his hands. Sometimes she turned her head so he caught her lips instead.

I blush furiously as I meet Peeta’s eyes. I most _definitely_ don’t want to kiss him, now or ever. It’s just a fragment of memory that my body’s converted into some strange instinct. After all, I horrified him plenty when I kissed his cheek after the Reaping and – my face burns at the memory – kissed his hand last night as I sobbed out my gratitude over his care for my family. He’s been so impossibly good to me this morning alone; the last thing I want to do is make him uncomfortable.

But somehow a _thank you_ doesn’t quite seem enough. “Have you put out food for the birds yet?” I ask.

He raises his brows as though this is the last question in the world he would have expected of me. “You, um…you said you feed them every day,” I explain quickly. “I was wondering –”

“I _do_ ,” he says at last, his confusion apparent, “but I haven’t yet today. Why do you ask?”

I bite my lip. “I thought I might take out the scraps for you,” I say in a rush. “I’m…well, going that way, and –”

“You want to feed the birds?” he says softly.

His surprise isn’t unfounded. There was a time, just days ago, when I would have devoured almost every scrap that Peeta put out for the birds. In our leanest times, I even salvaged eggshells from Merchant trash bins and ground them to powder to add to our meals. Prim was brittle with hunger after Dad died, and no one cares about eggshells unless they have chickens to feed them to or a garden to throw them on.

I really only asked about the scraps to do Peeta a favor; to save him a trip out in the cold. But the fact that I can even bear to think of laying food on the ground to feed wild creatures – not to lure them, just to fill their little bellies – tells me I’ve changed significantly since leaving home three days ago. Since moving in with Peeta, the gentle, generous boy who brings exquisite warmth and a bounty of food in his wake.

Yesterday morning I cried at the sight of Peeta’s heart overflowing to feed wild birds. Yesterday evening I imitated him feebly by sharing a cookie – something that would have been as precious as gold three days ago – with a mourning dove.

Today I want to bring scraps to the garden for _all_ of the birds.

My eyes are wet all of a sudden and I’m finding it hard to breathe. “Katniss…?” Peeta murmurs. My vision is unfocused, caught up in memories of delicate bird-prints in snow and many tiny beaks happily pecking at crumbs, and I feel his fingers brush my cheek.

“Yes,” I choke, and give him a wavering smile. “I want to feed the birds.”

For a moment it looks like he’s going to cry too. “Katniss, I…” he whispers. His eyes are soft and very dark, his hand warm against my face. “I’ll get the tray,” he says hoarsely, and goes to the kitchen.

I’m astonished at how hollow I feel as he walks away.

I pull on my coat and boots and retrieve my gloves, scarf, and stocking cap – my new ones; Peeta’s gifts – from their niche in the mudroom. Peeta meets me there, smiling as though nothing has happened, and presents me with the bird tray. Today it holds eggshells, crumbles of peanut butter cookies, and the ends of yesterday’s gingerbread loaf and hearty seed-filled bread, both minced into beak-sized bites – as well as some suspiciously fresh tidbits of cheese bun.

I raise a brow at this. “The blackbirds like cheese,” he says, straight-faced. “I’ll bring out some jam later for the cardinals. I didn’t figure you’d want to mess with that.”

I laugh at this ridiculous Merchant boy who’s taken the time to learn the food preferences of his garden birds, and I want to hug him so badly that my chest hurts. “Okay,” I say, shifting the tray to take hold of the lunch pouch. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Not _too_ soon,” he tells me, and touches my cheek with a fingertip. “Bring something – _anything_ – for supper, and I’ll make you a feast.”

“You make me feasts three times a day,” I chide, but the words come out slightly breathless.

“I’ll outdo myself,” he promises. “For my huntress.”

 _Huntress,_ my heart echoes; a fierce double-beat. _Hunt-ress, hunt-ress, hunt-ress…_ It’s harder than I would have thought possible to turn away, but I manage it at last, and Peeta opens the door for me. My arm brushes his as I pass, and I’m astonished by how badly I want to linger there, right on the threshold; to feel his warmth against my body, even through the layers of leather and wool. I push past the feeling, thinking it some sort of misplaced survival instinct – the urge to stay where it’s warm; any animal would do as much in winter – and hurry down the steps.

I go straight to the garden, where a few hopeful sparrows and a mourning dove – _my_ mourning dove? – are hopping through the fresh snow, seeking forgotten crumbs from yesterday. I approach cautiously, as slow and careful as possible without seeming predatory, and sink to my knees in the snow. The birds flutter back – but, to my surprise, not _away_ – and I toss a handful of tiny bread cubes gently in their direction before scattering the rest in a wide semicircle. I don’t expect them to start eating until I’ve gone, but the sparrows are brave, cheeky things, or maybe just accustomed to being fed by Peeta, and set on the food straightaway with a happy impatience. I laugh at their antics and rub a tear from my cheek.

There’s a chitter of mourning dove wings as the solitary pale brown bird flutters into the midst of the sparrows, and I smile at what I strongly suspect is my companion from yesterday. “There’s cookie crumbs,” I call to it softly. “Peanut butter ones. Don’t let the blackbirds eat them all.”

I dust the remaining crumbs from the tray, determined not to deny the birds a single speck of food, and make my way to the stable. It’s snowing still, a windless and mild morning, and my cap is covered by wet, heavy flakes by the time I reach the door.

Pollux waves to me from Rye’s stall, where he’s currying the pony’s coat in thorough, circular strokes to the sound of pleased, sleepy whuffles. He’s tousled and scruffy this morning, more so than usual. He wears a pair of weathered overalls over a thermal undershirt instead of his usual bulky sweater or parka. “Did he want to sleep in too?” I tease, coming over to them.

Pollux chuckles in reply – I gather he knows about the change in Lavinia’s routine – and gives the pony’s neck an affectionate pat.

“I’m hunting today,” I tell him, maybe a little too eagerly, and cringe at the enthusiasm in my voice. “Do you know where my bow is?”

He grins and gestures toward the back of the stable, where the workshop is. I poke my head into the little room and discover that Peeta’s been even busier than I had previously imagined.

The workbench is no longer empty and scarred, but covered end to end with a broad sheet of thick white paper – I spy rolls of it on a shelf nearby – with my foraging bag, bow, and sheath of arrows on one side and a neat assortment of knives on the other. To someone who doesn’t hunt, this would be an unnerving sight, even macabre, but I’ve had to make do with poor knives for years. These are clearly superior blades, chosen by someone experienced with carving.

But Peeta doesn’t know knives, except for the more “civilized” types used in the bakery.

I slip off my glove to test the edge of one against the pad of my thumb and hiss as it cuts a thin line in my fingertip at the slightest pressure. There are half a dozen fine knives here and all keenly sharpened. These would be ideal for skinning, filleting, even cutting through bone. Almost professional, really.

I stroke the heavy paper with my bare hand, considering. I’ve see its like before; not often, but in light of the excellent selection of knives, it’s not too difficult to identify. “This is butcher paper, isn’t it?” I ask over my shoulder, fully aware that Pollux followed me to the workshop and is waiting in the doorway to see my reaction. “And the knives,” I say, turning to meet his grin. “Peeta’s aunt picked them out, didn’t she?”

He shrugs in mock innocence and chuckles, taking his slate and chalk from the front pocket of his overalls. _Kind of brilliant,_ he writes, his bright eyes winking with amusement. _She knows what you need – and it’s less suspicious._

He’s right, of course. Peeta’s earnest and generous to a fault, but he wouldn’t know where to begin in choosing hunting knives, whereas Rooba’s been carving animal carcasses all her life. And beloved Victor though he may be, it would raise far less suspicion for the district butcher to order extra knives and rolls of butcher paper. Involving his aunt was a very clever decision on Peeta’s part, though I can’t help wondering what he said to convince her. She chose knives specifically for skinning and cleaning game – for _me_ – and as practical as Rooba is, I can’t imagine her happily ordering all these things without a very good reason. It was one thing when I lived in town and sold her rabbit and deer, but hunting out here will cost her a portion of Peeta’s business, one that overpayment for knives and butcher paper can’t compensate for. What had he said to make her agree?

I tuck Peeta’s lunch parcel inside my foraging bag, along with the largest of the new knives, then sling the bag over one shoulder and my arrow sheath over the other. The sheath is a welcome weight after these few days without; I feel more confident; self-reliant, even. I stand a little taller with arrows at my back.

I take my bow in one eager hand, my mind filling with images of tracks in soft snow and game so rich – so undisturbed and brave – that I could practically reach an arm into the woods and pull it back with supper in hand. “Here goes,” I tell Pollux with a smile that refuses to be repressed, and I slip out the back door.

I make it to the stand of sugar maples before nocking an arrow. There’s a veritable riot of squirrels out on this mild morning, chattering and chasing each other up trunks. _Bread,_ I think, seeing a hearty bakery loaf in place of every ruddy brush-tail. _So much bread._ I take aim at the biggest squirrel in sight and draw the bowstring taut, only to hesitate a split second before loosing the arrow.

I’m not in Twelve anymore, not really. I don’t have to trade for my food and I still have all the bread I could ever want, and then some. And Peeta might not even eat squirrel. The ones his father bought from me were hardly enough to feed a family with three strapping sons, and of course, then as now, he had access to fine butcher meat.

Not to mention: I can’t quite shake the image of Peeta feeding that chipmunk yesterday. There might be a world of difference between chipmunks and squirrels in disposition, but they’re close cousins in species. The same small, swift bodies. The same bright black eyes, easy to find and pierce with an arrow.

I lower my bow, shamed. “Go on,” I tell the squirrel that had very nearly been supper. “He probably puts out nuts and seeds for you too.”

I can’t stop myself from shooting three rabbits, though, nor do I want to. I haven’t seen a rabbit in almost a month and haven’t eaten one in longer than that, and they’re veritable little gold mines: meat and fur and bones to crack for a nutrient-rich broth, all in the palm of my hand. One rabbit sold to Rooba gave me enough money to buy eggs, salt, matches, soap, and a pound of oats, and there was the added bonus of the pelt, in which the butcher had little interest. Winters in Twelve are brutal, and to the right buyer, a good rabbit skin is worth almost as much as its meat. Almost.

I tug off a glove with my teeth to run bare fingers over the rabbits’ fur, and they sink down to the first knuckle before touching skin. This is a prime pelt: dense, deep winter fur, the sort I could sell to a Merchant woman to line her husband’s cap. I can’t sell them out here, of course, but I’ll think of a use for them.

I consider the soft rabbit prints denting the snow in every direction and contemplate setting snares the next time I’m out here. I could bring in braces of fat winter rabbits with very little effort – literally walk into the woods and pick them up – but somehow that seems unfair. These animals probably inhabit this part of the woods because of its lack of predators; it’s become a safe haven for them, with only owls to watch out for. It’s one thing for me to hunt them; they have a fair chance at escape, just like they would with an owl, but laying traps for them in gentle Peeta’s woods – hiding death in their place of safety – feels very wrong.

 _All right,_ I tell myself, shaking my head. _No snares._

I’ve walked for a little over an hour, my long-limp foraging bag bouncing pleasantly against my hip with the weight of three fine rabbits, when I spot the doe. Liquid eyes, graceful build, exquisitely muscled – and just thirty paces from my left shoulder. A deer could keep my family in relative comfort for almost an entire winter. Fifty pounds of choice venison, and I can almost name my price if I sell it at New Year’s, when Merchant families gladly open their purses for one day’s feast. Even at the height of summer, Rooba would pay me enough to hold my head up at the grocer’s for weeks on end, and buy new clothes and a few little presents for Prim besides. Just half of the profits from a deer – and a lot of bartering – bought Lady, after all.

I draw a long shaky breath before turning deliberately back to the path, and the doe bounds away, startled by my movement. _Not today,_ I tell her silently as she disappears among the trees. She’ll weigh more than I do, and I don’t have a hunting partner to help me carry and dress her. Not to mention, I already have three plump rabbits in my bag and I’m feeding, at most, four people with them. Bringing home a deer’s worth of meat would be wasteful at this point.

The air grows crisp as I continue through the woods, stirring my stomach to a hopeful growl, and I concede that it might be a fine time to eat the little lunch that Peeta packed for me. I should turn back soon anyway, with three rabbits to skin and clean before supper. I climb up into a wide, ice-crusted crook of a nearby tree and fold my left leg up to rest its ankle on my right knee, creating a makeshift table, and open the pouch.

There’s enough food inside for three lunches. And it’s definitely not coarse bread and tea.

At the top of the pile is, unmistakably, a small brick of shortbread wrapped in waxed paper, with my name – and a cluster of small white katniss flowers, perfect down to the tiny red dots at the base of their petals – painted elegantly across the top. It’s silly, but I blush anyway. Peeta must have made this yesterday with Prim’s shortbread and saved it for today. I chuckle, honestly surprised at his restraint. He normally puts baked goods in my hands before they’ve even had a chance to cool. I wonder if it was part of his plan for this morning – of the “things” he’d planned for, if I agreed to be his huntress.

Alongside the shortbread is a moist square of last night’s gingerbread, dusted with powdered sugar beneath its wrap. I shake my head – only Peeta would send me _two_ desserts – and set both on my thigh as I dig further into the pouch. There’s an apple, golden-skinned with a fiery red blush over its crown, and a small paring knife for it, slotted in the inner wall of the pouch. Next, wrapped carefully in cloth napkins, are two large cheese buns, one of which has been cut in half and filled with crisp crumbles of bacon. There’s also a tiny jelly-jar filled to its brim with creamy gold – honey butter, I determine with a sniff and one greedy fingertip – probably intended for the uncut cheese bun. I uncap the flask – a small jug, truth be told – to find it filled with hot chocolate. Peeta’s glorious hot chocolate, rich with cream and honey and spices.

All of my new favorite foods in a perfect little lunch. I try to laugh as I draw back the final layer of napkins, but it’s a ragged sound.

At the very bottom of the pouch, taking up almost the entire base of it, is a shallow crock filled with cold chicken; neat bites of dark and white meat, carefully trimmed from the remains of our supper last night. I barely get a piece to my mouth before tears spill down my face.

“Stupid cold chicken,” I whimper. “Stupid, _stupid_ Peeta.”

I wonder through my tears if he has any idea. If he knows how that first cold roast chicken brought me sobbing into his father’s arms. How I stole bites of the meat as I cut it in half, my hands trembling with hunger. How Mom and Prim and I stuffed ourselves with cold chicken and laughed till we cried.

I doubt that Peeta knows – that he _could_ , even – but he packed a clean cotton handkerchief with the lunch, and I gratefully use it to wipe my streaming eyes and nose as I choke down delicious bite after bite. The cold meat is savory and buttery and impossibly good, maybe the best thing I’ve ever had in my life. I owe Peeta so much more than rabbits for this, even rabbits with winter fur, and I can’t begin to think how I’ll repay him.

I mop my face half a dozen times, but it’s futile at this point. I sob through every last bite of cheese bun and bacon, gingerbread and shortbread and apple and honey butter. The cheese bun paired with hot chocolate – the hot chocolate I hoped for at breakfast; that Peeta promised me for “next time” – is so good it starts a whole new round of crying. _Stupid Peeta,_ I think again. In the time it took me to choose clothes – clothes he laid out for me and warmed by the fire – and dress for the day, he made me this perfect little feast, including every last one of my favorite foods.

He would have made the hot chocolate from scratch, whisking cream and honey and ground chocolate and spices in his little kettle, just to fill my flask. So I could have a warm drink in the woods. So I could see how good cheese buns taste with hot chocolate, since he hadn’t made me any for breakfast. Stupid, generous, impossibly thoughtful Peeta, giving me everything I could possibly want. I can’t decide whether I like or resent this soft-spoken, gentle boy who fulfills wishes I didn’t even know I had.

I manage to finish everything but a few bites of apple, and I decide to save those for Rye and the core for Peeta’s birds. _Who am I?_ I wonder suddenly, blinking tear-soaked eyelashes gone crisp with frost. _Who have I become in three days, to turn down squirrels and a deer; to cry over a meal before giving portions of it to wild animals?_

I’m about to swing my legs over the bough and drop down when I see it, almost directly below me: a wild turkey, bobbing its fleshy pink head toward the snow again and again to retrieve the crumbs that fell from my perch.

I haven’t had turkey since before Dad died.

I reach cautiously to my back for an arrow and fit it to the string…but I _can’t_. This poor stupid bird is no different than me, happily gobbling up the crumbs that someone better off than them left behind. That, in this case, _I_ left behind, as good a trap as the rabbit snares I resolved not to set.

I make up my mind to give Peeta a brutal talking-to when I get home. You can’t show someone how it is to feed wild animals, let them relate to their situations, then send them out to hunt. Dad balanced the two – he could win the trust of a chipmunk one minute and shoot a squirrel in the next, if he truly needed the meat – but he grew up in the woods, as much a wild creature as any of them. My experience has been so very different – hunt or starve to death – and now that I’m warm and well-fed, I don’t know what to do with myself.

And then I hear a series of rapid clucks and look up to see three more turkeys strutting past my tree, maybe ten paces off, and oblivious to my crumbs. _Take the shot, catkin,_ Dad’s voice urges in my head, clear as day. _Bring home a turkey for your boy._ This time I don’t hesitate.

It’s a beautiful shot, piercing the spine of the biggest tom, and I turn for home with almost twenty pounds of turkey in my arms. I could have gone for the smaller hen instead – she’d have been much easier to carry – but if I’m honest, something in me wants to impress Peeta with my haul, and this plump tom is a hunter’s prize.

Pollux is waiting eagerly when I reach the stable, and his eyes go wide at the sight of the turkey. I blush in spite of myself. “This is the less exciting part,” I warn him, hefting the turkey and my bag of rabbits onto the workbench. “Any chance of a tub of hot water?”

I usually sell game just as I find it – feet, faces, feathers, and all, and let the buyer fret about whether to pluck or skin or just carve out the bits they want – but since Peeta’s designated me as his huntress, I assume those tasks to be my responsibility. Not to mention, I cringe at the thought of handing Peeta a fully feathered wild turkey and expecting him to clean it in his cozy golden kitchen.

Plucking is messy work but it makes for a delicious roasted bird, at least according to Dad. The first and last time I had wild turkey was a few months before he died. It was the day before the Harvest Festival, and he had taken me out to the woods to introduce me to turkey hunting. After a grueling half-hour of crouching silently in the snow, pressed back against Dad’s chest so he could wrap his jacket around both of us, Dad brought down the biggest tom I’ve ever seen, even now. He could have sold it for a hefty sum, and I fully expected that he would, but to my surprise, he tucked the bird under his arm and brought it home for our own supper.

He scalded the turkey in our washtub then we sat together, with me perched on his knees, laughing and singing silly songs about birds as we plucked the carcass together. It was an endless, sticky task, and my arms itched all night from the feathers that clung to everything, but Dad kept promising it would be worth it to save the skin. When we were done, Mom rubbed the plucked bird with handfuls of savory herbs and roasted it happily, and even though we all stuffed ourselves at supper – roast turkey with fat katniss tubers, swimming in the rich gravy Mom made from the meat juices – there was enough to feed us for three glorious days.

I wonder when Peeta last had turkey, and if he enjoyed it as much as I did.

While Pollux boils water for my turkey, I bring Rye his piece of apple. I’m worried he’ll smell blood on me, that he’ll shy and whicker and nip at my hand, but he only blinks placidly and lips up the apple before nosing at me with his downy muzzle, looking for more. “That’s it for today,” I tell him with a flicker of genuine regret. “I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”

I duck outside to toss my apple core into the garden, pleasantly surprising a pair of blackbirds, then I take off my outerwear, push up my sleeves, and carefully skin and gut the rabbits at the workbench. Their pelts are a heathered gray-brown and beautifully soft and thick, and I set them soaking in a bucket of melted snow to remove any traces of blood. I remember thinking Dad was crazy the first time he tanned a rabbit skin using a solution of water and its own brain tissue, but it produces a soft, supple hide without the use of costly salt. I anticipate Pollux’s expression, half-horror and half-curiosity, as I prepare the brain mixture, but still I laugh as his eyebrows fly toward his hairline.

I’m busier than I’ve been in weeks, sweaty and flushed and sticky to the elbows, with damp feathers on my cheeks and guts under my nails, and it feels _amazing_. Worthwhile. As though, for the first time, I’m contributing to Peeta’s household instead of taking from it. And I’ll have plenty of work again tomorrow, just with today’s hides.

I’m parceling the turkey in clean butcher paper when Pollux comes in the back door and tugs at my sleeve, his face the very picture of excitement. “What?” I ask, amused and a little exasperated. I’ve cleaned up as best I can at the sink in his loft – and Pollux is accustomed to rough work, so his soaps are more practical than the silky scented ones allotted to me – but right now I want nothing more than to strip off these clothes and wash up all over again.

He hands me my stocking cap and jacket then pulls me outside before I’ve even gotten one arm in the sleeve. “ _What?_ ” I say with a little frustrated laugh as he takes firm hold of my hand, leading me toward the lake and the front of the house.

To my surprise, he stops at the corner of the house and points straight ahead – at my snowmen. I groan. “ _Yes,_ ” I tell him patiently. “I made a second snowman yesterday. I’m a child. What’s so exciting about that?”

He points emphatically at the figures again, and I realize that the one I made yesterday – the snow-woman – looks different, even at this distance. Her head and shoulders aren’t round balls of snow like yesterday. They look slightly more…human-shaped.

Frowning, I walk up to the snowmen to investigate. The one I made on my first day here looks just as he did when I left him, with his twig arms and pebble face and Peeta’s scarf, looped jauntily about his “neck” and dusted with fresh snow.

But my faceless snow-woman has been given the very realistic head and shoulders of a beautiful girl. A young woman of shimmering white, her features have been carved deftly from the ball of packed snow that had served as my snow-woman’s head. She now has a small nose, wide cheekbones, a stubborn little chin, and a long braid over one slim shoulder, all sculpted skillfully and with breathtaking realism. Even her eyes have been exquisitely shaped – _lovingly,_ one might say – beneath a fine, fierce brow. I made her smaller than the snowman, originally intending to make a snow-child, but today she stands exactly my height.

Pollux is alongside me now, but I don’t look up at him. Someone – Peeta, of course – has turned my snow-woman into what I knew she represented all along: a pretty Merchant girl… _Peeta’s_ girl. His wife, even, one day. The joy of hunting and plucking and cleaning hides, of an afternoon of honest hard work, is gone now, leaving me exhausted and sore, most especially in my heart. I wish I’d pummeled my stupid snow-woman to powder when I had the chance.

Pollux jostles my shoulder, determined to get my attention, and I look up at him crossly. “ _What?_ ” I ask for the third time, almost a snarl.

He’s grinning from ear to ear, and I’d punch him if I thought it would do any good. He turns me around and backs me up a few steps so I’m standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the snow-girl, then he gestures triumphantly at us both.

“I really don’t know what you’re saying,” I tell him wearily, looking once more at the snow-girl. “Peeta made my snowman into a girl. A pretty girl. A girl with a long braid and…” I notice it then, for the first time: the hood of snow lying against her shoulders, with thick “fur” trim sculpted about its edge and down the front of her snow-garment. The snow-girl is wearing my new coat, with its deep hood trimmed with white bear’s fur.

The snow-girl _is_ me. I made Peeta a snow-companion, and he gave her my face.

I look back at Pollux, the shock evident in my eyes, and his grin softens. He nods.

I don’t understand any of this. Why would Peeta _do_ such a thing? It’s just a stupid snowman that will melt and refreeze and topple over and, soon enough, disappear completely. Why did she have to have a face, so patiently carved from a lopsided ball of snow?

Why did he give her _mine_?

Pollux holds up his slate, and his eyes are a little sad. _You have no idea, do you?_ it says.

It’s the same thing Peeta’s father asked me when I cried in his arms over a lifesaving basket of food – over coal and apples and blankets and cold chicken – and, I realize now, essentially what Gale said when I told him that Peeta just wanted me around to share his home. I still don’t know the answer to the riddle behind their words, but I understand the question now.

“No,” I whisper, touching the snow-Katniss’s ivory cheek with a fingertip. “I don’t understand at all.”

I’m still frowning a few minutes later when I carry my parcels of paper-wrapped game in the back door of the house. Rabbits clean up quite small, but the three of them together with the turkey make for a hefty armful.

I’ve barely begun to stamp the snow from my boots when Peeta emerges from the kitchen, his handsome face beaming. “My huntress,” he breathes, his eyes flickering from the parcels to my face.

I move forward without thinking, pausing only to dump my parcels onto the bench, and wrap my arms around his waist, pulling my body to his in a snug, sound hug. _Yes,_ sighs something deep inside of me, as though a wound has been mended or an aching hollow filled. _This._

Peeta gives a little “Oh!” of surprise at my embrace, a gasp against the crown of my head. His body is tense in the circle of my arms; clearly, he’s horrified by my touch. But I don’t let go.

Because hugging Peeta Mellark might be the most wonderful thing I’ve ever felt in my life. We fit together perfectly; interlock, almost, at a simple hug. His torso is stocky and solid but not too broad, so my arms encircle him comfortably – and he’s not too tall either. My face fits into the curve of his neck and nestles there, pressing against the warm skin of his throat as his chin comes to rest on the top of my head.

I’ve known he smells amazing since that night in the sleigh, but hugging him is like drowning in his scent – no, not drowning. Like lying at the pebbled edge of the lake on a balmy autumn afternoon and being lapped by warm, delicious waves. I’m enveloped in honey and cream and cloves, in fresh bread and roast chicken and baked apples. I can almost taste the musk of his skin and swallow hard as I fight the urge to part my lips and drink him in with each breath.

His arms settle cautiously around my shoulders, banding me to him in a cradle of firm muscle and delicious warmth, and I stifle a cry against his throat. He gives a ragged groan in reply and pulls me a little closer, and I feel one strong hand ease upward to cup the back of my head. I melt into him, or maybe he melts into me; the tension is gone from his body now, and we sink together fluidly from head to hips. I lose track of where one of us ends and the other begins.

Peeta’s touches up till now – a fingertip brushing my cheek, an arm at my shoulder for comfort, his hands around mine – were like delicious crumbs. Holding him like this, and being held in return, is like a banquet – and gorging myself at it. It nourishes me on a new level; satisfies a hunger I didn’t know existed. For warmth and another’s touch. To hold and be held.

It’s rare than anyone hugs me, but even on those occasions, it’s never felt like this. Hugging Gale goodbye was _nothing_ like this. I feel _complete_ in Peeta’s arms, whole and good and inexplicably happy. Like something’s been missing for years, some vital part of me, and I never knew the difference till I stumbled upon that missing piece.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he says, and his sweet voice is hoarse; a jagged whisper. “But…what’s this for?”

His lips brush my stocking cap as he speaks, and I give a broken laugh against his throat at the question. “Cold chicken,” I tell him, the murmur muffled by his warm skin, and burrow closer still.

He echoes my laugh strangely, and I feel it against every inch of my torso. He almost sounds like he’s in pain. “I want to give you so much more than chicken, Katniss,” he whispers, and I feel his hand slip down from my cap to carefully stroke my braid.

I haven’t been able to think straight since he put his arms around me, but these words break through somehow to find a lucid part of my brain. “Like…like what?” I ask, and feel him shudder as my lips brush his skin. “You give me way too much already. What else could there be?”

“Well,” he says, and his body grows tense again. “Lunch, for example.”

The words are so jarringly ordinary that the moment, and whatever I found within it, is shattered. I let go of him and step back a little, and he quickly drops his arms from my shoulders, as though their touch burned him.

“Lunch?” I echo, puzzled. “You already made me lunch – the most _incredible_ lunch –”

“And then you walked back here and scalded and plucked and skinned and cleaned pelts for a good long while,” he points out with a half-smile. “For a man who can’t speak, Pollux kind of loves to gossip.”

I think of Pollux’s insistence on showing me the snow-girl, of making me see that she had my face. “I’ve noticed that about him,” I reply.

Peeta’s smile warms and broadens. “So, unless I miss my guess,” he says, “you’d like a bite to eat and probably want to wash up and change?”

I feel like kicking myself. I came straight in from butchering, fresh meat parceled in my arms and feathers in my hair, and _hugged_ Peeta. I cleaned up in Pollux’s room before coming back to the house, of course, but I’m still sweaty and sticky and I probably stink too. No wonder Peeta didn’t want to hug me back at first. He probably only did it so he wouldn’t hurt my feelings.

My face floods with angry color. “That…sounds nice,” I tell him quietly, staring at the soft evergreen wool of his sweater, where my cheek was resting just moments ago. “I’m sorry I – if I got you dirty. I know I must smell awful.”

“You smell like winter, Katniss,” he says, and I look up to find a strange conviction in his eyes. “Like leather and wool and pine and snow and game. You smell…” He closes his eyes tightly for a moment, as though masking a look of pain. “You smell _amazing_ ,” he whispers, opening his eyes in a flicker of white-gold to reveal dark, drowsy blue.

And just like that, I know he’s back. Sweet, gentle Peeta and his kind lies. I’m _magnificent_. My legs are _beautiful_. He gave his first kiss to a dying thirteen-year-old girl. He’s not trying to be cruel – quite the opposite – but I’m startled by how sad it makes me feel. I think it would hurt less if he told the truth, or maybe said nothing at all.

“There’s food and a hot bath waiting for you upstairs,” he says with a smile and collects my discarded meat parcels from the bench. My shame deepens at the gesture. Peeta brought me here to hunt, and on my first day at the job, I tossed aside all my game so I could _hug_ him. I should count myself lucky that he’s so nice, or I’d have earned a tongue-lashing by now.

“I’ll start supper soon,” he continues happily. “I promised you a feast, so I’ve got plenty to do. Take all the time you want to wash and rest. I’ll let you know when the food is ready.”

I wonder how long he thinks I need to rest, seeing as I usually make my trading rounds after a morning’s hunt, or how long a bath can possibly take. Then again, I worked a little harder than usual today, between plucking the turkey and fleshing and treating the rabbit hides. A few extra minutes of well-earned leisure might be all right.

“Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll be back soon, though.”

Peeta disappears into the kitchen, game in hand, and I quickly remove my outerwear. My slippers have been warmed and await me on the bench, and I slip them on gratefully. My hunting boots are comfortable but hardly well-insulated, and my toes are chilly after so many hours in the snow. I wonder what I could have done differently to get Peeta to unwrap me beside the living room fire and chafe the blood back into my feet, just once more.

My arms groan a little as I climb the steps, holding onto the railing to steady myself. My muscles have forgotten the heft of heavy game hauls during this lean winter, and a soak in warm water sounds like the best thing in the world just now.

I know better, but still I expect our old washtub from home until I walk through the bathroom door. Lavinia waits inside, draping my robe over a little chair beside the tub: Peeta’s glorious bathtub, with its deep bowl lined with smooth stones and its painted surround of tiny, perfect fish and water plants. It’s filled almost to the brim with steaming water that smells headily of flowers, and to one side of it is a little table – the perfect height to reach while bathing – with a tray of food on it. A bowl of soup, a pot of tea, a small round loaf of bread with a little dish of butter, and something that looks like a miniature pie.

I suck in my breath as though I’ve been struck in the gut.

I've seen this before; done this, even – for Dad. Before I was old and strong enough to lift the big kettles of boiling water, Mom did it – every night but Sunday. Sundays were Dad's only day off from the mines, and he spent a good portion of them in the woods, hunting and foraging and herb gathering; even swimming if the day was warm enough. He smelled wonderful on Sundays, even without a bath.

Preparing a bath for someone is a big deal in the Seam. You have to boil several kettles of water and keep the stove stoked the whole time. It’s a big drain on fuel, especially in winter, when coal is at a premium. Seam families are used to sharing bathwater – Prim and I would take turns in the same tubful, and Mom too – but Dad always got his own bath.

Dad was a child of the woods, born in its shadows, raised on its paths, and sustained by its bounty. He hated the film of coal dust that coats everything in the Seam, and going into the mines was suffocating to him – _like being buried alive,_ I heard him whisper to Mom once, his shoulders shaking as she stroked his hair. But there was no other living for a Seam man, and so he would come home six nights a week, his face more coal dust than olive skin, streaked clean here and there by trails of sweat.

Mom always knew, somehow, when he’d be home. It mattered, of course, because water doesn’t keep hot for long, and fuel is precious in the Seam. Every night she cut a precise, thin slice off a large bar of pale brown soap that smelled of bay leaves and cinnamon and laid it on a fresh towel on a chair beside the washtub. It was one of the only fine things we had, and it was what her tiny healer’s income went toward: little luxuries for Dad, like special soap just for him and extra coal to heat his bath. He never protested, no matter how thinly spread his small wages were, so I figured it was something they’d agreed upon when they were first married.

Many nights she put his supper plate by the tub too. Dad preferred to eat with us, but some nights he was just too tired. Sometimes he went straight to bed from his bath.

Mom always helped him bathe, rolling up her sleeves or, in hot weather, stripping down to her underthings. I used to think it was because the washtub was so small and Dad was long-legged; he had to fold himself in half to fit inside and he needed someone to soap his back and rinse his hair. He and Mom took turns doing that for me and Prim on Sunday nights, but it was different for him. It could take up to five buckets before the rinse water ran clear.

I realized much later that it must have been part of Mom and Dad’s ritual; a few moments of stolen intimacy. They had few enough of those, with Dad leaving before sunup and returning after dark. Sometimes Mom drew the curtain between the kitchen, where the tub was, and the living room, where Prim and I were playing or studying, and on those nights we heard extra splashes and urgent whispers, stifled gasps and soft, desperate moans. When they came out afterward, Mom would be hazy-eyed and contoured to Dad’s side, her camisole dampened against her breasts, and Dad would have an arm around her waist and wear an expression of utter contentment.

I consider, for the first time, how exquisite it must be to have a lover prepare your bath, to have their hands lathering your hair and soaping your wet skin. _To have their hands…_ but I can’t imagine more than that. I barely understand the mechanics of sex as it is, and that’s hardly something you can do in a washtub. But just the thought of strong hands stroking my back as I sit naked in a tub is enough to make me dizzy in the steamy, perfumed air of Peeta’s bathroom. 

Lavinia waves me over with a grin. She’s dressed unusually casual today in a long cream-colored sweater and brown leggings, and her stunning hair is pulled back in a long, loose tail at the nape of her neck, from which more than a few vibrant wisps have escaped to frame her face.

All at once I remember that she spent the entirety of yesterday cleaning up my grandparents’ home and shop and outfitting it for my mother and sister. “You didn’t have to do all this,” I tell her apologetically, gesturing at the food tray and the tub. The water, I see now, is beaded with some sort of bright golden oil that smells of spicy, exotic blooms – the same heady oil, I think, that Lavinia brought me as perfume last night, when I wanted to beautify myself for Peeta. “I can run my own bath and find food if I need it,” I assure her, but she only laughs. She gestures at the tub and the food tray, intending to explain with hand signs, but she shakes her head before she can mime anything further and tugs up her slate from under her collar.

 _Not me,_ she writes, eyes glinting as she nods toward the tub and the tray. _Him._

I should have known – deep down, I think I _did_ – but still my mouth drops open in surprise. “Peeta?” I squeak. “Peeta…did all this for me?”

She gives me a direct, mildly exasperated look, which I take to mean _Of course._

I picture Peeta in here, his sweater pushed to his elbows as he crouches down to fill the tub for me, his prosthetic leg bent beneath him. It would have been much easier than all those baths we heated for Dad – no boiling or carrying involved – but still the image takes my breath away with its intimacy. Peeta’s strong fingers dipping into the bathwater, ensuring the temperature is perfect for my body. His steady, skillful hands preparing a meal for me; baking, chopping, mixing, kneading…and then those same hands dispensing perfumed oil into the water to soften my skin.

And I thought he’d given me too much already.

“Why?” I ask Lavinia, my voice reduced to a whisper. “Why does he bother with all these extra things?”

She chuckles softly and mimes drawing a bow, then gestures to me.

“Because I’m his huntress,” I interpret, and roll my eyes. It sounds ridiculous coming from me, not powerful and primal like when Peeta says it. Peeta evokes an entire fairytale with one word, a moonlit tale of bowshots and doe’s hooves and black hair streaming in the wind.

Lavinia’s eyes crinkle impishly at the corners and she considers me for a moment, as though there’s something she’s not quite sure whether or not to say, then she puts chalk to her slate once more and decisively writes another message. _It’s a good excuse,_ it reads.

“Excuse?” I say, frowning in puzzlement. Silly as it sounds to call myself a _huntress_ , Peeta finally gave me a job to do. It’s the first time he’s offered any way for me to pay him back for his kindness, and it seems like a fair trade to me – or at least, the beginning of one.

She turns the slate toward her again, her lips pressed together in indecision, then thinks better of it and clips the chalk back into the frame before tucking the slate inside her sweater once more. She shrugs – not the mock-innocence of Pollux’s deliberate silences, but I know there’s more she wants to say – and gestures toward the tub.

I don’t need to be told twice. I peel off my clothes like a rabbit skin and climb into the tub, steadying myself with both hands on the ledge of the painted surround. Beneath my fingers are katniss plants, painted in such lush and lifelike detail that I can almost feel the cool clamminess of the tiny white petals and broad arrowhead leaves.

The water is even warmer than my exquisite shower of two nights ago and silky with oil to boot, and my toes curl greedily around the slippery smooth stones that line the bowl of the tub. I sink without hesitation into the welcoming pool of steam and sweet oil and moan as the water rises up with a lazy _glub_ to lap at my breasts and throat.

I’ve never experienced anything half as dizzyingly sensual as this tub, and I’m sure I never will. The fragrant oil clings to my skin like an ardent lover, leaving my limbs sleek and gold-tinged and glistening, and even the smallest movement is like a massage as my body bobs against the stones. There’s so much water that I even float a little, my head lolling back and hips drifting toward the surface before I’m quite aware of it. I’m tempted to allow it – the tub is so broad that I could lie across its surface without my toes touching the side – except for the fact that I’m stark naked. I’m bathing here, not swimming. And just because Lavinia’s seen my body doesn’t mean I should – or _can_ – brazenly exhibit it for her.

I didn’t think to unplait my hair before I got in, and my braid now lies against my spine like a heavy rope of wet silk. Lavinia shakes her head at this and kneels down to separate the soaked sections with nimble fingers, then carefully combs out at much water as she can. She continues her combing for a little, to my delight – the teeth of the comb feel exquisite against my wet scalp – and finally twists my hair into a loose knot at the top of my head and secures it with pins. She nods with satisfaction and draws over the little table with my meal tray, so I can eat while I soak.

I have no objections to this whatsoever.

I blush a little at my first spoonful of soup: tender morsels of chicken and plump egg dumplings in a buttery golden stock, rich with chunks of red-skinned potatoes, carrots, and sweet yellow onions. No wonder Peeta had smelled of roast chicken when I hugged him. He must have made stock from last night’s fat and bones while I was hunting.

I add chicken to the list of foods that my mind will never again be able to separate from Peeta.

The bread is new to me: a robust, light brown loaf – rye, I think – with delicious notes of roasted onion and tangy dill. I tear off bits with greedy pleasure and alternate spreading them with butter and dipping them in the soup, to Lavinia’s amusement. She pours me a mug of tea and I’m delighted to find it’s the same ginger-cake-like brew that Peeta made for me my second night here. I’m not surprised in the least to spot the tiny cream pitcher on the tray as well and waste no time adding a generous measure to my cup.

The little pie turns out to be a tart, flaky-crusted and filled with creamy goat cheese and finely chopped apples in a brown sugar sauce, bursting with cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger. I’ve seen these in the bakery window a time or two, I think. They’re costly confections and, I suspect, where Peeta’s father uses the majority of the soft goat cheeses he buys from Prim. I wonder if the apples are from Peeta’s garden; if he minced and spiced and canned them two months ago so he could share them with me today. I wonder if they were always meant for his huntress – if he always intended to hire one, and poor Katniss Everdeen was lucky enough to be good with a bow.

Cleaning a turkey and three rabbits clearly worked up more of an appetite than I expected. I finish everything in a matter of minutes, then Lavinia brings me a washcloth and a little cake of soap. The silky white bar smells of cream and sugar and the pale purple lilacs that grow in front of the mayor’s mansion, and I lather its richness into every inch of my skin.

When I’m thoroughly scrubbed from hairline to toes, Lavinia takes the soap and cloth again and twists on the tap marked _Hot_ for a minute or so – warming my bath, I realize, without coal or flame of any kind. She presses a kiss to the top of my damp head then gets to her feet and collects my dishes before ducking out to the hallway. It appears I’m meant to linger here awhile, which doesn’t bother me one bit.

I swish and splash and even paddle a little as I soak, but all I really want to do is lean back against the surround and close my eyes. My limbs feel warm and waterlogged and impossibly heavy, and after so many minutes of breathing in fragrant floral steam, my head is muddled and drowsy. I vaguely remember that I cried through most of my lunch today and blame that for my eyelids refusing to stay open.

I’m not aware that I’ve fallen asleep till Lavinia wakes me gently – minutes later? an hour? – to see if I’m ready to get out of the tub. My legs are leaden in the now lukewarm water and my fingertips impossibly soft and wrinkled. I’m not entirely sure I _can_ move, to say nothing of wanting to.

I put a hand on either side of the surround and try to stand, but my body feels ponderous beneath such a volume of water and the stones are slick beneath my feet, and I sink back to the bottom with a feeble chuckle. Lavinia shakes her head at my efforts and offers both hands to help heft me up, and I step out onto a plush rug where she dries me carefully from chin to toes. It’s a ridiculous indulgence but I’m too sleepy to protest, and my limbs are limp and heavy even out of the water. Not to mention, it feels _so_ good to have someone else rubbing a towel over my oil-moistened skin, massaging my muscles with each slow stroke.

When I’m completely dry, Lavinia helps me into the most comfortable clothing I’ve ever worn: underthings so soft and feather-light that I feel like I’m wearing nothing at all, followed by black leggings and a long, body-skimming tunic the color of violets. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do in these clothes, but when she guides me to my bedroom, where the covers are already turned back, I climb straight into bed and burrow my face among the pillows. _A nap sounds magnificent,_ I think with a yawn, swishing my softened feet decadently against the cool sheets as Lavinia draws up the covers with a quiet, throaty chuckle. And if the wages for a morning’s hunt are a hot bath, a delicious meal, and a nap to follow, who am I to argue?

I drift off almost at once, resuming my easy slumber from the bath. I don’t need more sleep on this of all days, but it feels too good to resist, even with the white brightness of a snowy winter afternoon outside my windows. I hear a soft voice outside the door once or twice as I doze – Peeta’s, of course, most likely addressing Lavinia – and Lavinia comes in at one point in to bank up my fire.

* * *

_I dream, strangely, of the white bear – not the one from Peeta’s Games but the one I dreamt of the night Peeta and I made our bargain. The enormous, silent creature who found me starving in the woods; who brought lifesaving food for me and my family then carried me on his back to a distant, ancient palace, where I woke in terror to find him sharing my pallet by the fire._

_I’m not afraid of him this time._

_In this dream, I’ve been hunting in the woods in my new fleece boots and pretty red coat, and I’m returning with three plump rabbits to show for my efforts. The white bear is waiting for me at the mouth of a cave that I know, somehow, to be our home, his great head resting mournfully on his paws, and when he sees me he whuffles happily and pads forward to meet me. I toss aside the rabbits to hug him around his broad neck and bury my face in the lush silky-softness of his thick fur._

_I retrieve the rabbits and present them with a proud grin, and the bear gives me a little bundle in return, containing a small loaf of crusty bread and a leg of cold chicken. “My favorite,” I tell him, kissing his broad flat head, and he noses my neck wetly in reply. I build a little fire and the bear settles behind me while I eat, his powerful forelegs enclosing my shoulders in dense warm fur and his chin resting on my head. Now and again he gives a low, contented sigh, and I reach up to stroke his cheek with affectionate fingers or lift a tidbit of my meal to his mouth._

_After I’ve eaten, the bear nudges me into the cave, toward a deep, clear pool lined with smooth stones. I undress eagerly and dive in, darting and rolling like an otter and laughing as the weedy stones tickle my bare skin. When I emerge from the pool the bear is gone, as are my clothes from earlier, but there’s a pile of soft rabbit skins heaped near the water. I use a few to dry myself then somehow piece the rest together in a rough semblance of a tunic._

_I walk toward the frosty mouth of the cave, barelegged and wrapped hips to shoulders in rabbit skins, to find the white bear sitting almost sadly, looking not toward me and the cave we share but into the dark, quiet woods. The moon is the merest sliver of silvery white tonight, and stars are shooting like diamond-bright arrows from its crescent._

_I curl my hands around one stout foreleg and lean my damp head against his shoulder. “Look at the moon,” I urge him softly. “Isn’t she beautiful?”_

_He looks at me, not at the sky, and gives a slow, solemn nod._

* * *

I wake some hours later in the rose-edged darkness of early evening to find I recall last night’s bird dream in every exquisite detail. My face warms at the images flooding my mind, and in spite of myself, I lean up to peer across the bed.

No one’s there, of course, let alone a slumbering bare-chested Peeta, and yet I can’t shake the image – or the _feeling_ – of him lying on the other side beneath my soft green sheets and fox fur coverlet. Of nestling against his heart and being cradled to it with one strong hand as his warm breath fans my feathers.

I sit up, blushing deeper still, and rub my hot face with both hands. I can’t think what’s come over me today: this mad urge to be close to Peeta; to hold and be held by him. I guess I’m lucky he’s so patient and kind, or he might have dismissed me by now. I’m certainly overdue for a reprimand of some kind.

My bedroom door is, to my surprise, open about halfway, and the scents of a rich, delicious meal are wafting in. Peeta’s house always smells of food, of course, but these are the scents of a _feast_ – of the Harvest Festival, really, or what Merchant families enjoy then. Roast meat and potatoes, hot fresh bread and cider and pie.

Except Merchant families don’t eat rabbit at the Harvest Festival. Well, a few of them do, I suppose, but the ones you notice – the houses you can’t resist lingering outside of for just one more delicious whiff – have _turkey_. And what I smell now is overwhelmingly, unmistakably roast turkey.

Peeta cooked my turkey, just for our supper tonight, and something about that causes a wild fluttering in my chest.

My slippers are warming at the fireside, but I ignore them to hurry barefoot across the pelts and downstairs, lured by the scent of hot roast turkey. When I arrive at the dining room, Peeta is circling the table, an apron tied at his waist and his sleeves pushed up, putting the finishing touches on a spread that might have come from a fairy tale.

I bring a hand to my open mouth. _I’ll make you a feast,_ he’d said. _I’ll outdo myself._

There’s more food here than I’ve ever seen in my life.

The oak table has been covered with a fine cloth of deep cranberry-red and _filled_ , almost edge-to-edge, with gleaming pine-patterned dishes _heaped_ with food. On the end nearest me is my turkey, plump and steaming, the skin I worked so hard to preserve now taut and crisp and a mouthwatering golden brown. I hadn’t thought about it earlier, but I realize now that its legs are larger – and more full of nourishing meat – than every last one of the blackbirds I painstakingly hunted to keep my family alive. Two turkey legs would have been a feast for us – and unless I miss my guess, I’m about to be offered any and all of this turkey, and a whole lot more besides.

Because the turkey is only the beginning. Peeta’s soup tureen is at the center of the table, filled with a dark, hearty stew of some kind, and there are half a dozen accompanying dishes to boot. Small round potatoes, glistening with butter and herbs, and a little pitcher of creamy golden gravy. A loaf of yellow cornbread, dandelion-bright and moist, and a dish of honey butter. Cornbread is a rarity in Twelve, except during the Harvest Festival, and even then, the bakery’s perfect loaves are an expensive indulgence for the wealthiest families.

There’s a bowlful of pumpkin seeds – I’ve harvested these from Merchant trash bins after many a Harvest Festival and made my own feast of them, raw and slippery with pulp – roasted and beautifully mottled with spices, and impossibly costly almonds, their skins toasted and coated with a rich honeyed glaze. Mom loves almonds, and Dad used to surprise her with a tiny handful of them any time he could squeeze a few extra coins from a trade, but he could never have afforded even _one_ of these luxurious confections.

On the opposite end of the table is another kind of bread, this one a small dense loaf of pale, earthy brown with its own dish of butter, as well as three goat cheese and apple tarts – the very same as I ate during my bath, and no less appetizing now – and a tall ceramic pitcher with a deep red glint at its mouth. In the few spaces where there _isn’t_ food, Peeta has artfully arranged apples and pinecones and pumpkins, acorns and honey jars and half a dozen fat beeswax candles, their wicks flickering like cheerful fiery stars and casting gaily dancing shadows over the glittering array of rich food.

Peeta has recreated the Harvest Festival, just for me.

I look at him finally, my hand still at my mouth and my eyes very wide, and see the evidence of all these efforts on him. His curls are limp and damp against his forehead, his cheeks flushed and bright, his apron stained in half a dozen places. He looks exhausted and radiantly happy.

“As promised,” he says in an eager, breathless voice. “One feast, for my huntress.”

I want throttle him and call him ridiculous and _hug_ him, so badly that I ache inside. I press my weight firmly into the soles of my feet, fighting the urge to move three steps forward and wrap my arms around the hard column of his waist once more. Peeta didn’t like me hugging him earlier, considering how quickly he’d let go of me, and I can only be grateful that he’s nice enough to act like it didn’t happen. I still have no idea what’s come over me to make me respond to him like this, but I attribute it to the impossible warmth of his body and the scents of bread and all manner of delicious foods that cling to him. I’ve been cold and hungry for _so_ long; no wonder pressing myself to him felt like being fed.

“Peeta,” I croak, “exactly how many people are you planning to feed here?”

His heat-flush deepens. “Well, Pollux and Lavinia will probably have a little,” he offers, but his lips are curved in a playful smile.

Without warning, laughter – genuine, shoulder-shaking, exasperated _laughter_ – bursts from my throat. “Peeta,” I gasp, “are you going to do this _every_ time I go hunting?”

He’s grinning unabashedly now. “Probably,” he admits, which only serves to spark _more_ laughter from my unaccustomed lungs.

“You think I’m ridiculous, don’t you?” he asks, but without any kind of resentment. His grin doesn’t waver in the slightest.

“Of course I do,” I answer honestly. “But I can’t deny this –” I gesture at the glorious table of food – “is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…and definitely the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” I add in a small voice. To be honest, I’m half-expecting this to be a dream – I’ve dreamt such a thing often enough on hollow nights – or a joke of some kind. Surely he made all this precious, breathtaking food for other people – or _more_ people, at the very least.

“I can’t decide whether that makes me happy or sad,” he says softly, his smile faltering a little. “But if it makes you happy –”

My feet break free of their lock on the floor and suddenly I’m hugging him again, cursing myself inwardly even as I tighten my arms around his waist and nestle my face into the curve of one strong shoulder; that delicious juncture of warm skin and blond curls and evergreen wool. Peeta makes a strange whimpering sound and then his arms are around me too, firm and supple as the contours of a willow cradle. I’m wearing much thinner clothes than when I hugged him after hunting, and my body drinks up his exquisite warmth like a thirsty sponge.

“Katniss,” he says huskily, “There’s no chicken on this table, cold or otherwise.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about and dismiss the statement with a little _mmph_ of pleasure against his neck. He’s settled one big hand at the back of my head, and his fingertips are caressing my scalp in a manner that sends pleasant little shivers wriggling their way down my body.

“So,” he says, quieter still, “why are you hugging me?”

 _I like this place,_ I think madly, my senses full of warm musky hollows and soft yellow curls. _I belong here._

_I belong with you._

I let go of him and step back so quickly that I stumble, and jerk away from the hand he reaches to steady me. “I-I don’t know,” I tell him, rubbing my face with both hands. “I must…something’s wrong with me today. I’m _so_ sorry,” I whisper, lowering my hands just enough to meet his eyes.

He looks confused and a little hurt, and I feel even worse inside. I knew I shouldn’t have hugged him. I fought it as hard as I could, but the impulse finally got the better of me and, as I should’ve known, I upset Peeta. “I’m sorry,” I say miserably. “I can see I made you feel bad –”

This time it’s Peeta who moves. He steps forward, as cautiously as he might approach a wounded animal, and carefully rests his hands on mine on my face. “You didn’t,” he assures me, gently easing my hands down till they’re curled inside his, fisted loosely beneath my chin. “You _couldn’t._ And for the record,” he adds, so softly that I feel more than hear the words, “you can hug me whenever you like, for no reason at all.”

“Stop being so nice to me,” I whisper, my eyes burning. I know that’s all this is: sweet Peeta and his kind lies. Actions speak much louder than words, and he let go of me without hesitation both times that I hugged him. And I saw his eyes when I pulled away from him now.

“I think that’s the only thing I’ll ever refuse you,” he answers, one corner of his mouth tugging up in a crooked smile. “I mean, for starters, there’s a whole feast just there, waiting for you, and I have no intention of denying you a single bite.”

I force a chuckle and let him seat me at his beautiful table. I’ve never met anyone so determined to be kind, and if Peeta refuses to stay angry at me for my foolish actions, I can only count myself lucky.

Peeta heaps my plate with generous portions of _everything_ and even hands me a small bowl of stew, a single bite of which brings tears to my eyes. It’s rabbit stew – Peeta cooked not only my turkey but at least one of my rabbits, probably two – and the most delicious I’ve ever had in my life. The savory stock, clearly made from the bones, is filled with tender grains of wild rice, chopped mushrooms, shallots, and garlic – and so much rabbit that every spoonful contains a hearty portion of meat.

When I make rabbit “stew,” it consists of strong bone broth and whatever shriveled vegetables I can forage from Merchant bins; more often than not, no meat whatsoever. Rabbits are too lucrative to keep for our own use, so I’ll sell them to Rooba for a few precious coins and watch to see who buys rabbit for their dinner – and then scavenge in their bins at the end of the night, fishing out the discarded bones of my kill and taking them home for another lifesaving meal. Most Merchant women only care about meat, after all, and don’t give a second’s thought to the wealth of marrow and minerals to be found in the bones of their meal.

“Is…is it okay?” Peeta asks worriedly, no doubt noting my tears. “I’ve only cooked rabbit a few times before –”

“It’s _perfect_ ,” I tell him, wiping my eyes with my napkin. “I just…don’t usually get to eat my rabbits.”

“You can eat _every_ rabbit now, if you want,” he assures me, reaching over to touch my hand. “Every last one, Katniss. I’ll make you rabbit pies and stews and rabbit-in-gravy –”

“Rabbit-in-gravy?” I echo, and Peeta chuckles.

“I told you, I haven’t cooked rabbit all that much,” he says sheepishly. “It sounds like something that might be good.”

“It _is_ ,” I tell him with a weak smile. “It…was one of Dad’s favorites. Granny Ashpet used to make it for him when he was little. It’s just – not the kind of thing I’d have expected from a Merchant boy,” I admit.

Peeta raises an impish brow at this and picks up the chunk of earthy brown bread from my plate. “Try this with your stew,” he says, his bright eyes practically sparkling.

I take the bread from his hand, needing little prompting, and dunk one corner into my bowl. There’s a dense sweet nuttiness to the bread that pairs perfectly with the gamey stew – and is, at the same time, nigglingly familiar. It’s not the coarse dark loaves that I traded squirrels for, but something older, more elusive. Something that reminds me strongly of Dad.

I try a second bite, this one spread with butter, and the strange familiarity of the flavor only increases. I raise my eyes questioningly to Peeta, who looks like he might burst with the need to speak.

“It’s acorn bread,” he explains in an eager rush. “Grandpa Marko’s recipe. Every year he’d make twenty loaves for the Harvest Festival, charge top coin for them, and they would sell out in an hour.”

My mouth drops open in surprise. “Where did he get the acorns?” I ask.

That’s the least of my questions. Acorns are wonderfully nutritious but _extremely_ labor-intensive to harvest. Dad and I collected them often on our trips to the woods, and getting them to an edible point could be an hours-long process. Dad cracked the shells between two flat rocks and had me pick out the nut meats with my tiny fingers, then he ground the meats to a fine meal and rinsed them in the lake, over and over and over again, to draw out the bitter tannins. I was hardly a patient child, and by the fifth washing he’d usually put a fishing pole in my hands or sent me off after blackberries.

After the leaching came boiling, over the hearth in the little shack by the lake. If we were eating the acorns for our lunch, Dad would make a porridge of the meal with bits of whatever else we’d found that day, like berries or honeycomb, and we’d eat from the same bowl with two battered spoons that he always kept in his pocket. If we were taking the acorns home for supper, he’d drain the leached meal thoroughly, parcel it up in a clean handkerchief, and bring it to Mom to boil and finish off.

To my knowledge, Dad never sold acorns, let alone to the bakery. They were a poor man’s sustenance, not a Merchant delicacy.

“According to Grandma Lydda, they bought acorn meal from a beautiful black-haired woman named Ashpet,” Peeta says with a wide smile. “A week before the Harvest Festival, she’d stop by with half a dozen little sacks of it, ground silken-fine, and never a hint of bitterness. And for a few years after she died,” he adds, his smile softening, “they bought it from her son.”

“Dad,” I whisper. The Granny Ashpet part makes sense, really. She was considered by many, Seam-folk and Merchant alike, to be the most beautiful woman in the district, and of course she was a skillful huntress and forager, and a clever trader besides. If this acorn bread was as highly sought after as Peeta claims, her profits for the nut meal would have secured her a comfortable winter, at least by Seam standards.

It makes sense that Dad would continue the arrangement after she died – he was eighteen then, just past his last Reaping – but then: “Why did he stop?” I puzzle. Such a lucrative trade could have bought my family a tiny piece of the Harvest Festival for ourselves, or at least, extra coal and bread for the winter.

Peeta lowers his eyes, looking a little shamefaced. “He quit trading at the bakery altogether after he got married, I think,” he says quietly.

“Oh,” I say, feeling a dull ache in my chest at his words. “Of course.”

Dad lost his herb trade with the apothecary when Mom ran away to marry him, and of course he wouldn’t have been welcome at the bakery after marrying the girl the baker’s son had loved all his life, even planned to marry himself. It occurs to me for the first time ever that my childhood might have been a more comfortable one if Dad had simply married a Seam woman, like Gale’s mother or Granny Ashpet.

“Hey,” Peeta cajoles gently, and I look up as his warm fingers brush my hand. “I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he says. “I just thought you might like to hear about your grandmother trading with mine.”

“I did,” I assure him. “I never knew about any of that, except that Dad could make acorn meal in his sleep.”

Peeta chuckles at that, and somehow things are back to normal once more.

“How did _you_ manage it?” I ask, and immediately bite my tongue for the unintended slight, but Peeta only chuckles again.

“They taught us a little about acorns in training for the Games,” he explains. “Enough to know that if it’s still bitter, you soak it again.” Dad had told me this at least a hundred times as I paced the lakeshore and grumbled for him to be done rinsing our acorn meal. “I got Grandpa’s bread recipe from Dad, but he didn’t know how to make the acorn meal,” Peeta goes on. “So my first attempts were pretty terrible. I threw them out in the woods for the squirrels,” he laughs. “I figured it was a fair trade for stealing so many acorns.”

This brings to mind an image of powerful, stocky Peeta walking through the woods with a pretty Merchant basket in hand, stooping to pick up acorn after acorn while squirrels chitter crossly and twitch their tails from the branches above him. I giggle in spite of myself.

“Yeah, it _was_ pretty laughable,” he admits. “Actually, that’s part of the reason I’m so diligent about feeding the birds. Before this summer they could eat all the apples and berries – even corn – that they wanted from the garden, and out of nowhere this lumbering Merchant boy moves into the house and starts picking and eating all of their food!”

He laughs, a warm, merry sound that draws me to lean toward him a little. “You _are_ ridiculous,” I tell him. “Paying wild birds back because you kept your own produce. But…” I hesitate, unsure of my words or their reception, and suddenly my fingers are touching his. “That might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” I whisper.

He turns his hand beneath mine, like he did yesterday at lunch, but this time he lifts my fingertips with his and strokes them with the pad of his thumb, from knuckle to nail tip, one after the other. “Give me time,” he says softly. “I love my birds, but they’re not the only things I mean to take care of.”

I clear my throat and carefully draw my hand away. He means his girl, of course, and right now – sitting at the feast he prepared for _me_ ; the scrawny Seam girl that he calls his “huntress” – the thought of how sweetly he means to deal with _her_ makes my chest hurt and my throat burn with bile. “I don’t doubt it,” I tell him, choking out the words. “I’m sure you’ll spoil your girl in ways I can’t even imagine.”

Peeta stares at me for a long moment, his brows drawn and eyes a little dumbfounded, and then he laughs. It’s a sharp, breathy sound, at once exasperated and affectionate. Dad usually laughed at me like that the fifth time I asked if the acorn meal was ready. “Katniss,” he says wearily, “eat your turkey leg.”

I raise my brows at this but comply without protest, and as I tear away bite after bite of the rich dark meat to dip into my gravy, Peeta pours me a mug from the tall ceramic pitcher. The liquid is a vibrant dark red and tingles my nostrils as I raise it for a careful sip. It’s warm, not hot, and yet it burns all the way to my belly while teasing my tongue with tangy whispers of cranberry and sweet spices.

“This,” Peeta says with a brilliant smile as he pours himself a cup, “is Grandma Lydda’s famous spiced wine, reserved strictly for the Harvest Festival and New Year’s. You simmer apple juice, a cup of cranberries, whole anise and allspice, stick cinnamon – and about half a gallon of sweet red wine.”

He winks at that, and I understand now why the liquid burned in my throat. I’m unaccustomed to alcohol, except for the measures of bitter wine that Mom used to administer medicinally, but this is actually _pleasant._ I imagine it’s warmed the belly and toes of many a Mellark after their last holiday deliveries.

“When we were itty-bitty,” Peeta explains, “we each got a spoonful before bed as a special treat – and of course, when you’re three, you’ve never tasted anything so awful in your life, so Dad would always dribble a little honey in the spoon to sweeten it. Once you turned twelve, you got half a cup with supper,” he says, “and Grandma Lydda, for all that she was generous with her cooking, measured out her spiced wine like a miser. But once you turned eighteen, you could have all you wanted.”

I lean up a little to peer inside the beautiful pitcher. It’s still more than half full, and there’s a good year and a half between tonight and my eighteenth birthday – and Peeta’s too, I think. “Peeta, there’s a lot more than a cup here,” I remark.

He grins. “You can’t very well go to all that trouble for two little half-cups of spiced wine, now can you?” he teases. “And it gets better the longer it sits, so by tomorrow this–” he indicates the contents of our mugs– “won’t even compare.”

“What about Grandma Lydda and restricting spiced wine to holidays?” I persist, but I’m smiling now too.

“Since you came here, pretty much every day is a holiday,” he says with a strange smile, “but if you need more of an occasion than that: Tonight marks the first meal I’ve shared with my huntress, made with game that she hunted and produce from my garden…and acorns that I collected this fall,” he adds shyly.

“So it’s sort of like our own Harvest Festival,” he explains. “And the perfect occasion for Grandma Lydda’s spiced wine.”

I take another sip and savor its spiced heat on my tongue. The alcohol isn’t so strong, really; it warms more than it burns, and I’m already a little in love with the rich spices and sweet-tart flavor. Not to mention, knowing Peeta’s superb capacity for combining foods, I suspect it will pair perfectly with everything on this table. “That’s a good enough excuse for me,” I tell him with a grin, and return to my fist-sized turkey leg with gusto.

I eat every bite of my hearty rabbit stew and wipe the bowl clean of savory drippings with acorn bread. I drown potatoes in turkey gravy and chase them onto my spoon with slices of cornbread spread with honey butter. I devour tender slices of turkey breast from one hand and follow them with creamy bites of goat cheese and apple tart from the other, then wash it all down with long, deliberate sips of spiced wine.

I’m gobbling up the pumpkin seeds and honey-roasted almonds like a greedy squirrel at a hole in a feed sack when Peeta chuckles softly and rests a hand on my wrist. “Katniss, none of this food is going away,” he says gently. “I promise. You can have more for breakfast if you want.”

I look up at him in surprise. His words address my inevitable fear, of course, but he’s never stopped me while eating before. An odd feral part of me wants to snap at his hand like a dog whose bone has been taken away.

He must see that in my eyes, somehow, because he laughs outright then. “I’m not making you _stop_ ,” he assures me. “You can keep at this all night if you want. I just wanted you to save a little room for dessert.”

Peeta’s desserts are the best part of his meal. I drop my handful of pumpkin seeds back into the dish and sit upright, making Peeta laugh even harder. “Give me two minutes,” he says merrily as he pushes back his chair.

He returns with the most beautiful pie I’ve ever seen in my life: deep, golden-crusted, and filled with russety spiced custard. _Pumpkin pie._ In our very best years, Dad would buy one tiny slice at the Harvest Festival and we’d split it four ways. Sometimes Dad would forfeit his two bites, knowing how much his girls loved it, but Mom couldn’t. She cried quietly as she ate her portion, savoring each precious forkful.

I imagine she had all the pumpkin pie she wanted when she was walking out with Peeta’s father.

Peeta cuts a slice as big as my hand and lifts it out onto a little plate, then dollops on a stiff heap of whipped cream and drizzles the entire plate with delicate threads of liquid gold.

“This is just for starters,” he says, handing me the pie plate. “Have all you want.”

The rich pumpkin custard is chilled and dense and headily spiced, a hundred times better than I remember any of those shared slices tasting, and the whipped cream and golden drizzle – warm clover honey with a little cinnamon mixed in – only enhance the already incomparable flavor.

I look up to see Peeta frowning as he chews his first bite. “I wish Marko were here,” he says. “He’s the pieman out of all of us. His crusts melt in your mouth.”

I remember Prim saying something like that in her letter after Marko brought over two pies for their supper, but for some reason hearing it from Peeta makes me angry. This pie crust is buttery and flaky and _delicious_. I try to imagine how it could possibly be _better_ – and fail utterly.

I tell Peeta this, perhaps more forcefully than necessary, and he blushes crimson at the praise. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll, um…have Lavinia bring back one of Marko’s pies next time she goes to town. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

Somehow, this irks me even more. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell him fiercely. “I’m perfectly happy with the baker I have.”

His pale brows shoot up in surprise. “ _Are_ you, Katniss?” he asks quietly.

I realize what I said then and turn my attention back to my pie plate, my face burning. “I’m…with your cooking, I mean,” I mumble. “And your baking. It’s fine – good – better than good – perfect–” I stuff a bite of pie into my mouth to shut myself up, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.

“Ah,” he says softly. “I figured that was what you meant.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he sounded a little sad.

We return to our meal without further conversation. When we’ve both eaten so much that I’m certain neither of us will make it upstairs for the night, Peeta straightens in his chair and gives me a careful smile. “Katniss, I know we usually say goodnight right about now,” he says, “but…I was wondering if you might like to sit with me in the living room for a little while. I started some tea earlier…I thought it might be nice after a heavy meal.”

I wonder why he’s being so shy about the request, considering how playfully he pulled me into dessert preparations yesterday and took me outside to eat on the porch without even asking if I minded. I didn’t, of course – last night had been wonderful, almost beyond imagining – but it seems odd that tea in the living room would require more ceremony than coffee and snow ice cream on his porch. Not to mention, after the meal we just shared, I’m hard-pressed to deny him anything.

“Um…sure,” I reply. “Do you want me to clear the table or anything?” I know it’s a stupid question before I ask. Peeta never lets me clean up after a meal.

“No, I’ll take care of it later,” he assures me. “I’ll meet you in there with the tea in just a minute.”

I slip into the little back bathroom for a moment to wash my hands and gasp at the sight of my face in the mirror. I’d forgotten my hair was still pinned up from my bath, and my cheeks, already filling out after just three days of rich, hearty meals, are flushed with warmth and food and wine. The woman who looks back at me is a stranger, long-necked and smoky-eyed and almost eerily beautiful. _Huntress,_ beats my wine-slowed pulse at my temples. _Hunt-ress, hunt-ress, hunt-ress…_

I hurry from the room, reaching back to switch off the light as I go, and arrive at the sofa the same time as Peeta, who bears a steaming mug in each hand. “I’m sorry,” I tell him at once, half blushes and half trembling. “I wasn’t thinking…when I fell asleep…I didn’t mean to come to dinner looking so…” I wave a hand along my body, certain he’ll understand. _So casual?_ I think. _So…untidy?_

“So beautiful?” he wonders. He’s smiling, but there’s no humor in his eyes. “I’ve never seen you with your hair up like this,” he says, gesturing with the mug in his right hand. “Or in clothes that…well, _fit_.” He blushes a little at that. “You look taller and elegant and…your _neck_ ,” he finishes, a little hoarsely, as though that explains everything.

I think of his fingertips skimming just above the nape of my neck when he stroked my braid earlier. Of the long dusky column of my neck, reflected in the bathroom mirror, and of warm lips on wet skin.

“Why do you keep saying I’m beautiful?” I ask. I mean it as a retort, but it comes out shallow and breathless and vulnerable, as though his answer matters more than I can possibly imagine.

“Why does it bother you to hear?” he asks softly in turn.

“Because it’s not true,” I say firmly, shoving from my mind all the new Katnisses that have emerged since I came here three days ago. Katniss in a currant-red sweater, her silky hair gathered in a loose braid. Katniss in a pretty nightgown, fragile as a wood violet, with black hair spilling over her shoulders. Katniss in the stone tub, naked and lean and supple, her gilded skin beaded with bathwater. A shimmering white Katniss sculpted in snow by hands that knew every nuance of her features.

 _You’re the spitting image of your granny, catkin,_ says Dad’s voice in my mind. _A fine little huntress already, and a beauty before you know it._

“I guess that’s a second thing I’ll have to refuse you,” Peeta says with a sad smile.

He sets the mugs on the little table and lowers himself stiffly to the sofa, then motions for me to join him. I think again of how much he’s done today and wonder if his leg is hurting him, or maybe his back, from all the standing and bending in the kitchen, preparing my feast.

Or maybe from carrying me and holding me while I slept.

“Are you in pain?” I venture cautiously as he retrieves our mugs, and he looks up at me in surprise. It’s likely he doesn’t want anyone to notice, let alone call attention to it, and I feel horrible for doing so. But he only gives me another sad smile and says, “I’m okay; just a little sore. But…it means a lot to me that you asked.”

He offers me the handle of my battered little mug, that odd little remnant of home, made welcome in his handsome kitchen. “It’s hot,” he cautions. “Give it a moment.”

I lift the mug to my nose, curious to discover what delicious blend Peeta’s concocted for me this time, and my eyes fly open in surprise at the prevailing scent in the steam. “Mint tea?” I say.

He’s looking into the depths of his own mug now, not at me. “I remember, you know,” he says quietly, tracing the rim with a fingertip. “All the times you brought a little crock to school for your lunch and pretended it was broth. You even ate it with a spoon so no one would notice. I used to wonder why you smelled like mint all the time,” he whispers with a small, broken laugh. “It was like an old tale: a little wood-girl with black braids and smoke-colored eyes, whose breath and fingertips smelled of wild mint.” He makes a choked sound that might be a sob. “And one day I realized it was all you ate…all you _had_ to eat. The broth was mint tea.”

I stare at him, trembling and shocked beyond words. I’d fooled everyone with the tea-broth, even Prim. Sometimes I put a few pebbles in the crock so it looked like there was something in the soup, and I’d spoon them into my mouth if people started watching me. It furthered the illusion for my classmates _and_ my hollow belly. Pebbles hold a whisper of salt and other minerals, and I could pretend each one was a hard nut or an old chunk of carrot. I’d suck on the pebbles for a while or roll them around my cheeks before carefully spitting them back into my spoon, one at a time, and starting the process all over again.

 _How_ had Peeta figured it out? I’d only seen him watching me once or twice, and I’d made sure to spoon up plenty of pebbles on those occasions, implying a hearty soup.

 _Why_ had he figured it out?

_Why had it mattered to him at all?_

“The gray things you put in the tea,” he says, lifting his head slowly. His eyes are bright with tears. “I know they weren’t food.”

“They were pebbles,” I whisper, and he looks away again. A tear slips from his cheek to wet the back of his hand.

“Peeta,” I plead, fussing with the handle of my mug to stop myself from reaching out. The memory hurts me, of course, but it’s a hundred times worse to think of it hurting _him_. To see him crying over my misfortune as though it were his own. “I’m okay now,” I tell him. “I –”

I mean to tell him how I hunt and forage and trade and have stayed alive and well for five years doing just that, but that isn’t the truth. Not really. “You gave me bread,” I say instead. “Burned bread and _hope_. I would have died that day in the rain if not for you – and this winter too.”

I set down my mug and take his face in my hands, turning him to meet my eyes. “ _You_ saved me, Peeta,” I whisper fiercely, and for the first time ever, the realization doesn’t bother me. Huntress though I may be, I would have been dead twice over now if not for this gentle, generous boy who feeds birds from his table. “I needed warmth and food and you gave me a mansion and a feast.”

I wipe a tear from his cheek with a fingertip, mustering up my brightest smile, and he dips his head slightly to press a kiss to the fleshy base of my thumb. “I’ll give you so much more, Katniss,” he rasps, leaning into my palm with a groan. “Just give me time.”

“We _have_ time,” I remind him softly. His words make no sense, but this much I can correct. “I’m here forever, remember?”

Something about this makes him open his eyes and sit up straight, drawing my hands away from his face in a manner that almost seems reluctant. “Sorry about that,” he says, and he’s abruptly cheerful, friendly Peeta again, albeit with tear-reddened eyes. “I didn’t mean to get upset or make you upset. I wanted to – hoped to – take a bad memory and make something pleasant of it,” he explains, and presses the tea mug into my hand once more. “Go ahead,” he says shyly. “Try it.”

I bring the cooling tea to my lips and give a little squeak of pleasant surprise as the liquid touches my tongue. It’s mint tea, of course, but fuller-bodied – like the blend of mint and proper tea leaves that I served Peeta when he came to strike our bargain – with a decadent, creamy note of – “ _Chocolate?_ ” I gasp.

Peeta grins. “I brewed the mint with some tea leaves, like you made for me when I came to your house,” he says. “It was a delicious cup, and…well, it was sort of the start of – all this.” He takes in me and the room and himself in one sweeping gesture. “And after I discovered how much you like chocolate, a few pinches in each cup were a natural inclusion.”

“Chocolate mint tea?” I say with playful dubiousness.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “This will be ‘mint tea’ for you now – if you like it, I mean.”

I chuckle at his uncertainty. “Peeta, I love every single thing you’ve given me,” I assure him. “This is just the latest in a very long line.”

He replies to this with a brilliant smile and settles back against the sofa cushions to drink from his own mug, and for several minutes, like last night on the porch, we sit and sip and sigh in companionable silence. After a little I curl my legs beneath me and lean back against the arm of the sofa.

My little mug is cozy-warm against my fingers. I cup it in both hands like a baby bird and hold it near my face, breathing in the whorls of chocolate-sweetened steam. The snow has resumed once more, falling soft and steadily outside the room’s broad windows, while the fire crackles gently on the hearth.

“This is nice,” Peeta murmurs.

“Yes, it is,” I agree. It’s _beyond_ nice. A warm house on a winter night, a belly-full of delicious food, and a gentle, handsome young man sharing his tea and fire with me.

“I’m sorry I messed up your snowman,” he says quietly, looking out the window toward the lake. There’s sufficient moonlight tonight to just make out the two figures near the shore. “I thought…she needed a face,” he says, “but, well…I saw you out there with Pollux and…you looked upset.”

“Not at that,” I reply, gazing out at the snow-couple.

“It…” He hesitates for a long moment. I glance up at him, curious what he means to say, but he’s still looking out the window, his bright eyes fixed on the snow figures. “It was supposed to be us, right?” he asks finally. “You and me?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, and blame the spiced wine for putting strange thoughts in my head and words in my mouth. “It was supposed to be.”

His thumb idly circles the rim of his mug as he gazes out into the night. I envision that broad thumb stroking snow-dust from the perfectly sculpted cheek of his snow-Katniss and shiver with a strange pleasure. “I didn’t know you could do that sort of thing,” I say honestly. “I knew you were an artist, but…snow-sculpting?”

He chuckles and turns from the window at last. “I’ve picked up all kinds of hobbies this winter,” he says, eyes glinting with amusement. “I ski, too.”

“Ski?” I puzzle. I don’t know what that means. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard the word before.

“The doctors thought it might be good for my mobility in the winter,” he explains. “You fit these long skinny runners on your feet and then balance on two poles, sort of like c –” He breaks off, and I realize he was about to reference canes, or maybe crutches. “Anyway,” he goes on, “you move by sliding your feet forward, one at a time. It’s a good way to get around in snow. I’ll show you tomorrow,” he offers. “And if you want, I’ll get you skis of your own.”

“You don’t –” I begin to say, but the words die on my lips at the eagerness in his eyes. Peeta wants to share something with me, something he clearly enjoys, and right now I can’t think of a single reason to deny him that. “Okay,” I concede. “If you really want to.”

“Anything for my huntress,” he says softly. It’s odd, but there’s no teasing in his tone. I wonder if the wine has muddled his mind and loosened his tongue as well.

I look out the window again, at the shimmer of moonlight on snow. “You know, the moon is a huntress,” I muse, and Peeta sits up in surprise.

“What was that?” he asks, his eyes wide.

I silently curse our rich supper, the decadent bath that preceded it, and my wine-loosened tongue all over again. “It’s nothing,” I tell him, feeling like an idiot for letting the words pass my lips. “Just a silly story.”

“I like stories,” he says, smiling brightly, “and this one sounds really good. Tell me?”

I take a deep breath, scowling at the request – but why not? It feels like a night for stories, with snow falling outside the window and a fire crackling on the hearth. I shrug and set down my mug, to Peeta’s apparent delight, and turn a little towards him. “ _The moon is a huntress, catkin,_ Dad said one day,” I begin.

“Catkin?” Peeta echoes curiously, his smile warming.

I scowl again. My childhood nickname is part of the story, but I hadn’t expected to be stopped and asked questions so soon. “It’s the furry little gray bud on a pussywillow,” I tell him. “They’re called willow catkins. You know what those are?”

To my surprise, Peeta nods.

“Well, when I was a baby, Dad called me his ‘willow catkin,’” I explain. “As I got older, it shortened to just ‘catkin.’”

“I remember that,” he says, surprising me further. “Hearing your dad call you that, when you came by the bakery on Sundays. I always thought it was a derivative of your name,” he admits, pink-cheeked. “‘Catkin,’ like ‘little Katniss.’”

Something about Peeta saying _little Katniss_ tugs at me deeply. Maybe because we’re so comfortable tonight and he’s being so nice, listening to my silly story. Maybe because he’s gotten me to talk about my father, something I haven’t done in longer than I can remember.

“Actually, when I was a baby –” I reply, only to stop myself abruptly. I’m veering off-track into another story; one Peeta can’t possibly care to hear. “Never mind, it’s stupid,” I say.

“I _guarantee_ it’s not stupid,” he assures me, his bright eyes strangely earnest. “Please tell me?”

I sigh and concede. “When I was a baby, I was really attached to my dad,” I say. “I loved my mom, of course, like any baby, but I would fuss and scream whenever Dad left. And he was a miner, so he was gone at least twelve hours a day, six days a week. The only way Mom could calm me down was by singing this old song over and over. She said it was the only thing that cheered me up.”

People forget that Mom has a lovely voice too, with Dad’s being so remarkable, so high and bright and clear. Mom’s is the opposite, low and husky and warm, a voice made for lullabies. If Dad’s voice was like birdsong, Mom’s is like the wind in tall grass or the lapping of lazy lake-waves against cattails, soughing and soothing.

I think I resemble her more than Dad tonight as I recount the song for Peeta:

 _Bye baby bunting  
_ _Daddy’s gone a-hunting  
_ _To catch a little rabbit-skin  
_ _To put the baby bunting in._

I haven’t sung in longer than I can remember, and my voice is lush and warm tonight. I attribute it to the wine – both the timbre of my voice and the soft, strange look on Peeta’s face as I finish.

“Well, Dad got home early one day and heard her singing,” I continue with a smile, settling into my tale now. “‘Woman, why didn’t you tell me?’ he teased her. ‘No wonder she cries! All the times I’ve been to the woods, and I haven’t brought her a single rabbit-skin yet!’ ”

“I suppose he had to sell them,” Peeta says, then blushes at the implication. “I mean – not that –”

I shake my head. I know what he means. My family is dirt-poor and has always needed every scrap of money we could bring in. “That’s the funny part,” I tell him. “Dad could hunt and snare rabbits in his sleep, and the woods are _full_ of them in summertime, so he made a nice little income at it at the time.

“But no one wants rabbit skins in summer,” I explain. “Their fur is sleek and thin then, not soft and thick and dense like it is in winter.” And, of course, summers in Twelve can be sweltering. “No one wants fur in summer, let alone to pay extra for it when all they want is the meat.

“So, Dad would stockpile his warm-weather furs,” I say, referring, of course, to the little concrete shack near the lake. Dad had a handful of hidey-holes for his rabbit skins there, where predators wouldn’t sniff them out. “He had – well, a place in the woods where he could treat and store the hides, so as not to draw Peacekeeper attention to our home.”

Peeta nods in understanding. He looks far more intrigued than shocked by my story.

“So the next time he went hunting, he brought home a bagful of those rabbit skins and tossed it at Mom’s feet,” I say, chuckling at the mental image. “‘I’ve done my part, woman,’ he said – affectionately, of course. ‘It’s up to you now.’

“While Dad was at the mines the next day, Mom sewed me a baby bunting,” I explain, resituating on the sofa so I can describe the garment with my hands. “It was sort of like a snug peapod with a little hood, made all of silky gray rabbit fur – even lined with it. As Mom tells it, she slipped the bunting on me in the middle of one of my wailing fits and I went straight to sleep, cooing like a little mourning dove.”

Peeta smiles at this, but there’s something wistful in his eyes.

“Dad came home to find her in the rocking chair with me wrapped in the bunting, all soft gray fur with my eyes just peeping out from under the hood,” I say, laughter bubbling in my throat at memories of Dad recounting this part. “‘This is never my Katniss!’ he cried, even though he was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. ‘You must have turned your back for a moment, Alys,’ he said. ‘This is a fairy changeling! A willow catkin!’

“And it stuck,” I tell Peeta with a smile. “I spent most of my first six months in that bunting, a furry willow catkin with two bright eyes. I was born in May, so it wasn’t cold out for ages, but: however warm it got, being inside the bunting made me calm and happy, Mom said. Almost like Dad was holding me.”

“You really loved your dad,” Peeta says softly.

Something about that gentle observation edges open the slowly healing grief-wound in my heart, and I nod stiffly in reply. I know if I try to speak right now, tears will pour out instead.

Dad used to take out my bunting sometimes and regale us with the story, to Mom’s chagrin and laughter, while I marveled that I had ever been so tiny as to fit inside a garment that was little bigger than Dad’s shoe. The bunting was the only thing of mine that didn’t get passed on to Prim but stayed, after I outgrew it, in Mom’s drawer of precious things.

After Dad died, I only saw the bunting once more. Mom would sit on their bed, listless and frail, and stare out the window while she sang the baby bunting song, over and over again, a sweet dream turned nightmare. Maybe it helped to tell herself that Dad was only hunting and would be back soon with rabbit-skins for her to sew. Sometimes she rocked herself as she sang, her arms curved across her breasts as though she cradled a baby. And just once, by moonlight, I saw her holding my bunting in her hands as she rocked and sang and wept, bright tears streaming silently down her pale face.

I start a little as Peeta’s hand covers mine. “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs. “You were trying to tell me a story about the moon being a huntress, and I made you talk about your dad.”

I shake my head and choke back the tears before they rise any further. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “The stories are related a little anyway.”

I draw in a long shallow breath, fully aware that the huntress tale I’m about to share is far more foolish than the account of my baby bunting. “I liked huntress stories,” I say by way of introduction, “but Dad really only knew two. The story of my Granny Ashpet, of course – and the huntress moon.”

Peeta gives a visible shiver of anticipation. “I don’t know _any_ huntress stories,” he says cheerfully. “So I’m really looking forward to this.” He reaches up to the fireside rack, where one of our blankets returned after last night, and drapes the warmed wool across our laps.

He takes his tea mug in both strong hands, and I begin.

* * *

 _The moon is a huntress, catkin,_ Dad said one day. We were berry-picking in the woods, and I must have been about eight.

 _Like Granny Ashpet?_ I wondered.

 _Very much like Granny Ashpet,_ he said. _You can see her bow in the crescent._

 _What does she hunt?_ I asked him, then guessed eagerly, _The sun!_

 _No, sweetheart_ , Dad said. He _hunts_ her. _The sun is a hunter too, you know._

I frowned. With true child logic, I challenged, _But he doesn’t have a bow._

Dad shook his head with a smile. _He’s not that kind of hunter,_ he said. _You see: the sun is in love with the moon._

I gasped, my eyes going wide.

 _And he wishes that she would love him too,_ he went on. _Every day he crosses the sky, grand and warm and beaming, trying to coax her to him, so he might hold her in his golden arms._

 _That’s no way to hunt,_ I said crossly. The sun sounded very stupid to me.

 _Well, he’s not a very good hunter,_ Dad chuckled. _Suppose we say he’s more of a trapper than a hunter._ _You know that old saying, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar”?_

I shrugged. I’d heard it, but whoever wanted to catch flies?

 _The sun is big and loud and bright,_ Dad said, _and the moon is just a tiny pearl in the sky. And she watches him._

For some reason this bothered me. _She does not,_ I said.

 _Yes, she does,_ he corrected me gently. _You can see her during the day, you know. Look._

We were in a clearing then, and he lifted me up onto his shoulders and pointed out the tiny white sphere, distant but distinct. I had never seen the moon in daytime before, and I gasped again.

 _What happens on cloudy days?_ I puzzled, tangling my fingers in Dad’s smooth black hair.

He tipped his head back to look at me. _The sun is sad because he can’t see the moon,_ he said, very seriously. _That’s why there’s no sun on cloudy days. And when it rains, he’s crying, because she’s nowhere to be found._

I considered this as Dad lowered me to the ground again. It was silly, the idea that the sun should long after the moon so much that he refused to shine anytime he couldn’t see her, but at the age of eight, it wasn’t impossible to believe.

 _And sunset,_ Dad said, almost in a whisper, _is his love song to her._

I frowned. _Sunset’s not a song, Dad. You can’t hear it._

He shook his head, smiling. _He_ paints _it, catkin,_ he said, his voice hushed and full of wonder. _The sun floods the sky with beautiful, blazing colors, telling the moon how much he loves her and can’t bear to leave her. But finally he’s exhausted – the sun rises very early, you know, and all that shining and warmth is very hard work – and he goes to bed, alone and sad. And then the moon creeps out, silver and lovely, and hunts the bear and deer and rabbits made of stars, all night long._

I decided then and there that the moon was shy. Like any child, I envisioned the heroine of the story as a grown-up version of myself. A small, olive-skinned girl with black hair and gray eyes.

I would most assuredly be shy of a great golden sun, declaring his feelings to all and sundry from a bright blue sky.

 _If sunset is his love song,_ Dad continued, his voice even quieter, _sunrise is his lullaby. Unlike the sun, you see, the moon sleeps very little. The sun tells her again how beautiful she is, and what a fine huntress. He paints the sky for her, all pale pinks and yellows, like a soft blanket. He’ll be there when she wakes, he says. And she peeps out at him from her bed in the clouds._

This was a pretty image indeed. I peered up at the little white pearl in the sky, wondering if that might really be what she was doing: watching the sun from a distance. After all, the moon has no reason to be out during the day.

 _But the sun is patient,_ Dad said, _and crafty. And once every few years, he gets the better of the moon. He sneaks up behind her and catches her in his arms._

I shook my head fiercely. _That’s wrong, Dad,_ I said. _The sun can’t sneak up on anybody, let alone a huntress like the moon. He’s too big and loud and bright._

 _Well,_ Dad said thoughtfully, scratching his chin, _my papa used to say that the moon is an overconfident woman. She thinks she’s so swift and stealthy that no one could ever catch her, and so she quits watching. She doesn’t expect the sun to surprise her._

_But my mama said – and remember, catkin, Granny Ashpet was a huntress herself, the best ever seen in these parts – that the moon loves the sun in return._

I gasped a third time. _No!_ I cried. _That’s not true! It can’t be!_

 _Isn’t it?_ Dad wondered. _After thousands of sunrises and sunsets, of seeing love for you painted across the sky, wouldn’t_ you _feel differently, catkin?_

That shut me up for several moments. Children don’t know much about falling in love, but I could see the appeal of such glorious gifts to the moon. Every sunset and sunrise, each one more beautiful than the last, painted just for _you_ …it would be awfully hard to resist.

 _So, for one reason or another,_ Dad went on, _the moon lets herself be caught. The sun wraps his golden arms about her, blazing with love and joy, and for a few heartbeats, the entire sky goes black as they unite to form something new: a dark sun. A circle of brilliant black, ringed with pure white flames, so bright that it blinds those who look directly at it._

 _What happens then?_ I whispered, hushed with awe.

Dad raised his brows at me as though the answer was obvious. _The sun lets her go, of course._

 _What?_ I cried, my heart breaking. _After everything he did to try and win her? Why?_

 _Because he loves her, catkin,_ Dad said softly. _Haven’t you heard the old saying, “If you love something, set it free?”_

 _Yes,_ I said angrily, _and I think it’s the stupidest thing in the world. If you loved something, why would you ever let it go?_

Dad looked at me very seriously then. _Someday, some boy is going to be very happy you feel that way,_ he told me. _But as regards the moon, suppose we look at it another way. You remember my mourning dove?_

It wasn’t the best example he could have given. _Yes,_ I grouse. _You let her go before your first Reaping. You thought she would be better off in the woods._ The first time he’d told me that story, I’d bawled like a baby and flailed my little fists against his chest as he tried for more than an hour to console me.

 _You’re right, I did,_ he said. _But remember the end of the story, catkin. That bird found me in the woods every time I went back and stayed with me till I went home again._

 _Then why did you have to let her go?_ I cried. I’d asked this a hundred times before and never gotten a satisfying answer.

 _You know why,_ he said gently. _She was safe and happy there, and she needed fresh air and trees to nest in._

 _It’s exactly the same with the sun and the moon,_ he explained. _The sun knows the moon is a wild creature. She needs shadows and woodlands, crisp night air and the hunt, not the blue sky-home of the sun, where it’s hot and bright and she can be stared at by all and sundry. So he lets her go._

_The sun returns to his brilliant blue sky, to warm and cheer the earth once more, and the moon again hunts her star-game from dusk till dawn. He continues to woo her with sunsets and lull her to sleep with sunrises, while she watches and drowses in her little cloud-bed._

I made some small sound then, a sniffle or sob. It was the saddest story I’d ever heard in my life, somehow _worse_ than Dad and his mourning dove.

Dad crouched down and took me in his arms, sitting me on one knee and rocking me a little. _Don’t cry, catkin,_ he soothed. _It’s a love story, after all. You see, in her cloud-bed, the moon grows round and full and births the sun’s child, a bright, beautiful girl, known as both the Morning and Evening Star. She’s a little bolder than her mother, you see, being half made of the sun himself, so in one part of the year you’ll see her in the western sky, putting her father to bed, and in the other you’ll see her in the east, welcoming him as he rises, and all the while basking in the love songs he paints for her mother and winking like a tiny diamond in the rosy sky._

 _As parents go, they’re a balanced pair,_ he said. _The moon is a fierce and protective mother who teaches their daughter to hunt the star-game at her side, and the sun is a proud and gentle father who encourages her to shine ever brighter, tenderly brushing her cheek with his crimson fingers as he paints the sky._

 _And every few years, catkin,_ he whispered, _the sun and moon meet again in the sky and embrace like the lovers they are, and all the world marvels in darkness at their union. The black sun they merge to become, ringed by the blinding white light that can be seen, in small part, in their daughter._

 _Every few years?_ I asked, narrowing my brows. It sounded like an awfully long time to be apart from someone you really loved.

 _More often than you’d think,_ Dad assured me, pointing up with a low chuckle. _It’s not all bear and deer and rabbits up there, you know._

I peered up at the bright afternoon sky with a puzzled frown, making Dad laugh outright. _The_ stars _, catkin,_ he said. _The moon and the sun love each other with all their being, and after every reunion, the moon births another child. Over thousands of years, the sun has given her a skyful of little suns, white-bright and twinkling, to hunt the star-game with her while shining down their father’s light._

I thought of the thousands – maybe _millions_ – of stars in the night sky. If even half of them were the sun and moon’s children, that still meant _countless_ reunions; countless embraces and bright black suns, ringed about with blinding white light. _So you see,_ Dad continued with a knowing grin, _our lovers get together often enough._

 _They travel far and wide, those star-children,_ he said, lifting me onto his back and getting to his feet again, a pouch of berries in each hand. _All except for the firstborn, who prefers to stay near her parents, for she is dearest to their hearts and the most like them both._

 _And the moon, though a devoted mother, is content to let her children roam where they will, without following along and fussing at their heels,_ he said, and turned a little to kiss my cheek. _For you see: for all her fierce independence, her love of the hunt and silence and solitude, the moon loves the sun above all things,_ he whispered. _She can never truly take her silver eyes off his golden form, nor bear to be parted from his warmth and light a moment longer than she must._

 _None would believe it, catkin,_ he confided, tapping one long finger against the side of his nose, _but the moon_ rejoices _at the dawn. As the eastern sky grows pale at last, she settles into her cloud-bed and watches eagerly for the bright fingers of her beloved to crest the horizon, to begin the new day by painting her lullaby._

* * *

The mug of tea sits cold and forgotten in Peeta’s lap, clasped loosely in both hands as he stares out the window.

I’m not sure when I lost him. He’d been an ideal audience at first, smiling and laughing and shaking his head as I recalled my childish responses to Dad’s tale, but somewhere around the sun and moon’s first meeting as lovers – or was it when the sun painted the sky for the moon? – his smile faded and his manner grew more and more subdued, till by the end he wasn’t even looking at me anymore.

I’m not sure whether I’ve saddened, angered, or simply _bored_ him. “I’m sorry, Peeta,” I whisper. “I told you it was a stupid story.”

“I was wrong,” he says hoarsely, his eyes fixed on the falling snow. “I _do_ know a huntress tale. It…starts a lot like that one.”

“Really?” I reply, but I’m not actually asking. I know full well that he doesn’t know this story, or anything close to it. My grandparents made it up for my dad, or maybe their grandparents’ grandparents invented it as a bedtime story for _their_ children. No matter how dark and twisted a world we live in, the moon always holds a particular magic, especially for children.

So it must be another of his kind lies…except it makes no sense for him to lie about something like this.

“What happened with the bird?” he says, his voice soft but oddly urgent. He still hasn’t looked at me “Your dad’s bird – the mourning dove? You said he let her go, but –”

“She came back,” I answer, thoroughly confused now. “I mean, she stayed in the woods, of course, but every time he went out to hunt or forage, she would find him and ride along on his shoulder, share his lunch – all the things they did before.”

He sets his forgotten mug on the table in a sudden, impatient motion and leans on his forearms, his shoulders hunched and tense as a wire. I have no idea what’s happening or what I’ve done to provoke it, but he’s very clearly upset.

And I can’t bear it another moment.

“Peeta, what’s wrong?” I ask. I want so badly to touch his arm, his shoulder; _anything_ to soothe him, but I’m afraid it would only make things worse.

He turns to me then, his eyes overbright and lips tight with tension. “You’ve been here three days now, Katniss,” he says. “You’ve had a chance to see what life is like here most of the time.”

“Yes,” I reply, uncertain and more than a little concerned about where this might be going.

He presses his lips together for a moment, as though debating – or fighting – his next words. “If you could go home tomorrow, would you?” he asks. His voice is quiet and even, but tension has lent it an edge. For some reason, this question matters a lot – both him asking it and my response.

I consider for a moment. I know he’s not actually offering to send me home, and I already have plenty to do here tomorrow. “Probably not,” I tell him. “For one, I need to work on the rabbit skins.”

He gives a stiff, forced chuckle at this. “You could take them with you, Katniss,” he clarifies. “You’d be…going home for good.”

My heart stumbles through several beats in a blind panic, and I grasp frantic fistfuls of the wool blanket across my knees as I force my paralyzed lungs to draw in air. I understand what he’s saying now, and it makes me want to scream and cry and hide myself all at once. “You’re…sending me home,” I choke out.

“No –” he begins with a vehement shake of his head, but my mind is rushing ahead like a terrified deer in a burning forest.

“What did I do wrong?” I whisper.

His hands close over mine on the blanket. “ _Nothing_ , Katniss,” he says firmly, though his eyes are full of pain. “You could _never_ do anything ‘wrong.’”

“Then why do you want me to go?” I plead, almost a whimper. I sound weak and pathetic but I don’t care, not in the least. I don’t want to leave this place. I _can’t_ leave this place.

“I _don’t_ want you to go!” he cries, his voice breaking.

A fierce, pulsing silence falls between us, stilling my breath with its weighty heat. If I was confused before, I’m doubly so now.

“I want you to have the _choice_ ,” he says quietly. “I never meant for you to stay here for…for long without knowing what things were like.”

A new realization strikes me then; a bitter, albeit sensible one that I can’t believe didn’t come to me sooner. “This is why you bought my family the shop, isn’t it?” I say hollowly. “In case I end the bargain –”

“No!” he says, so sharply that I flinch a little, and tightens his hands around mine. “Our deal was simple: you came to stay with me, so I take care of your family. The apothecary shop was just an additional, very efficient way to do that.”

“But…that’s if I stay with you forever,” I remind him. “If…isn’t it?”

He stares back at me with pained eyes but gives no reply, and I realize that he never clearly stated his terms – at least, not in regard to the duration of my stay. I’d assumed it was a trade for life – my presence in his house in exchange for money and comfort for my mother and sister – but it was _me_ who told Prim, _You wouldn't expect him to make you rich in exchange for just a month or two of my company, would you?_

And it was me who spoke up again before Peeta could reply. Because, somehow or other, I had already suspected that he would try to skew the bargain in my favor. To give me more than I could ever repay him for.

Which is, of course, exactly what he’s done. No amount of hunting could even _begin_ to pay for Mom and Prim’s new life of luxury, let alone my fur-draped bedroom and fine new knives and beautiful red coat, lined with a portion of Peeta’s priceless bearskin.

I can’t leave, of course. Absolutely can’t. There might be no way I can ever pay Peeta back for his generosity toward me and my family, but it would be unthinkable – no, _impossible_ – for me not to spend the rest of my life trying.

But that’s not what I’m thinking about right now, nor what made me react so strongly to the possibility of going back for good.

This is my home now. This impossible fairy tale in the woods, populated by beautiful mute servants, a stocky sleigh-pony, and birds that eat better than most Seam families. Where feasts fill the tables three times a day and the master of the house kisses my hands and feet and wraps me, head to foot, in his precious bearskin. Where I am bathed and dressed and put to bed by gentle hands – and joined later beneath my furs by a silent, benevolent stranger who supplies still _more_ comforts: the echo of their body heat and the unlikely reassurance of their presence.

I understand none of this, not the extent of the luxuries offered nor why Peeta has chosen to share them with _me_ of all people, but the fact remains: this is my home now. The sooty little house near the edge of the Seam, where Mom birthed me and rocked me and wrapped me in rabbit skin, where Dad told me stories and gave me baths and surprised me with sweets and pretty pebbles from his sleeve – where I nearly _died_ , and saw Prim die, of hunger – is gone. The Justice Building will have assumed possession of it straightaway. It may even have been allocated to a new Seam family already. My family no longer has any connection to it whatsoever.

They’ve traded it for a lovely new house in the Merchant sector – a new life, in truth – in which I have no place. Mom and Prim will acclimate to Merchant life with next to no trouble. Two pretty blonde women with an unsurpassed knowledge of herbs and healing between them; just a few days of warm beds, hot meals, and fine new clothes and they’ll be walking the square with their heads held high. I have no place in that life, and though the realization leaves me a little sad, I’m not upset or even particularly surprised.

_I like this place._

I’ve been terrified to admit it from the very beginning, but I love every inch of Peeta’s home. Even in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have envisioned a more perfect place to live. A bedroom of fur and pine and wild rock, where the sheets are warmed at bedtime for my comfort. A cave-shower with twin waterfalls to wash in and a bathtub as deep and blissful as a secluded forest pool. A sweet-shop of a pantry, filled with sustenance and delicious wonders. Miles of woodland, free of predators and rich with game and sugar maples.

A kitchen that always smells of fresh bread, where my favorite foods are prepared before I even know what they are.

_I belong here._

My dream self has known for a while, though my conscious mind was afraid to accept it. I _fit_ here, as though this house and everything in it was created with a Katniss-shaped hole at its heart, and from the moment I crossed the threshold, the house knew I belonged to it – or perhaps, as Peeta keeps insisting, _it_ belonged to _me_. The clothes, the chairs, the food…at any given moment, it’s as though I’m being embraced by their comforts. The sizes, colors, textures, scents, and flavors…this house is not simply perfect; it’s perfect _for me_. As though it was _made_ for me.

That’s more than enough to keep me here, but it’s not what stopped my breath and made my heart stumble at the prospect of leaving this place forever.

_I belong with you._

I realize now what my body has been trying to tell me all day; why time and again it’s all but hurled itself into Peeta’s arms.

It’s not just the house, luxurious and perfect though it is. _Peeta_ is my home. Where he is, is where I belong. I don’t understand it in the least, but I know now that leaving him is no longer an option. The merest thought of it leaves me sick and trembling beneath the wool blanket spread across our laps.

Just being near him is the most amazing feeling in the world, like the softest sweater, the finest meal, and the most delicious scent, all rolled into one. A hot bath, a warm bed, and fur beneath my chin. Comfort, food, and freedom. Peeta’s given me all of these things in the three short days I’ve been in his house, and because of it, he seems to embody them.

I’m not sure I can survive apart from him, but I’m certain I don’t want to try.

 _Someday, some boy is going to be very happy you feel that way,_ whispers Dad’s voice in my mind, like a fleeting riddle I’m supposed to have solved by now.

I raise my eyes to Peeta’s at last and find them resigned, sorrowful, dull with grief. He knows I’ve made a decision and he thinks he knows what it is.

 _Little Katniss,_ he said. _I don’t want you to go._ I don’t know why it matters so much to him, but as desperately as I want to stay, I’m not about to dispute it.

His strong hands are still closed around mine where they fisted in our blanket an eternity ago, and I uncurl my fingers to turn my hands beneath his. Large pale fingers, powerful enough to break a Career’s neck and gentle enough to feed a chipmunk, lie across my small dusky palms and tremble a little.

A thin splash of red – his district token – peeks out from his left sleeve, and I edge the cuff a little higher with a frown. The fabric is ragged along the edges and worn from many washings, but I think it held a pattern once. I smooth the cloth with my thumb and Peeta gasps sharply at the touch.

It’s an unmistakable reminder that things won’t always stay as they are now. That this house, and everything in it, is intended for another. The girl for love of whom Peeta endured his brutal Games.

One day very soon it’ll be _her_ on this sofa, her pale hands entwined with Peeta’s as they nestle beneath wool blankets and watch the snow fall. They’ll embrace and caress and kiss each other breathless, then go hand-in-hand to his glorious bedroom of sunset and autumn and trade gasps and moans beneath the tangled cedar branches of his canopied bed.

That shouldn’t bother me, and I assure myself that it doesn’t. Pollux was wrong; I don’t love Peeta. He can love and marry whoever he wants and give her dozens of chubby blond children. I’m his huntress and – perhaps, one day – his friend, and I want nothing more than to see him as utterly happy as he tries to make everyone around him.

 _Though perhaps not yet,_ murmurs a voice in my mind as I look down at our joined hands. I want him to teach me about skiing. I want to bring home a deer and have him make a feast of it, just for us. I want to teach him how to fish and roast his first catch on a little spit as we watch the sun set from a blanket on the lakeshore. I want to stand beneath his apple tree when the buds burst into bloom and when frost crisps the last of his crimson-blushed harvest. I want to take him sugaring and sample every variation he can dream up for cream-coffee and hot chocolate.

I want a hundred more lavish breakfasts, a hundred perfect little lunches packed just for me, and a hundred splendid dinners followed by a hot drink in a cozy seat, side by side with him. I want a hundred cakes and pies and pastries for my dessert and a hundred kinds of fresh bread, spread with honey butter and fed to me with his own strong hands.

“I don’t want to go,” I breathe, looking up into his eyes as my hands curl around his. “I want to stay here, for as long as you’ll have me.”

I watch something like dawn break across his features; a rising tide of radiant bliss. “That might be forever,” he whispers.

“That might be okay,” I whisper back.

His lips curve in the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen and I feel myself mirror it. “Katniss,” he sighs. “My huntress.” He gently untangles his right hand from my left and raises it to my cheek, and I lean into the touch with a sigh of my own. _Home_ , I think, closing my eyes. _This house and this boy and his warmth._

_I belong here._

Something featherlight, fleeting and warm, brushes my forehead for the briefest of moments, and my eyes flicker open to see Peeta leaning back quickly, his cheeks dark and eyes averted.

 _Did he kiss me?_ I wonder wildly, my heart flailing against my breastbone like a wounded bird.

I answer myself in the same instant: _Of course he didn’t._ Peeta has no cause to kiss me, nor any interest in doing so. He must have touched my forehead with his other hand…his left hand, which is still held securely in my right.

Clearly, Lydda Mellark’s spiced wine is putting fantasies in my head now.

“What would you like for breakfast tomorrow?” Peeta asks, a little breathily, as he turns back to me, smiling.

“Pumpkin pie,” I answer immediately. “With whipped cream and that cinnamon-honey sauce and cream-coffee to drink.”

He laughs softly. “You’ll get that and more,” he promises. “ _So_ much more. Maybe even cold turkey on acorn bread,” he adds with a wink.

My mouth waters at the suggestion, and I know that’s what I’ll find in my lunch pouch tomorrow, along with honey-roasted almonds and a flask of cream-coffee. “What do you want for supper tomorrow?” I ask in turn.

“My huntress beside me,” he says quietly, and blushes crimson at my puzzled look. “Maybe rabbit-in-gravy,” he suggests, his bright eyes glinting.

I think of rabbit pelts deep and dense enough to swallow my fingertips and imagine crafting them into something for Peeta. I’m no seamstress, but something tells me it would be worth it to try, just for the look in his eyes when I present him with a garment made from furs I fleshed and tanned myself.

I _am_ his huntress, after all. I’m probably _supposed_ to make him things with fur.

“Rabbit-in-gravy it is,” I tell him, smiling, and reluctantly get to my feet. His left hand still lingers in the curve of my right, and it’s harder than I would have thought possible to let go.

“Sleep as late as you like tomorrow,” he reminds me needlessly, his voice very soft, as our hands part.

He knows I know this already, and yet he says it every night. I wonder if it means something more than I’m hearing – and just as quickly dismiss the notion. I’ve clearly enjoyed far too much spiced wine tonight.

I arrive at my bedroom to find Lavinia dozing in the chair at my dressing table and realize, between my nap and the feast at supper, followed by tea and tales by the living room fire, I’ve stayed up much later than usual tonight. I fully intend to change and get into bed without rousing her, but she’s out of the chair before I’ve taken my nightgown off the warming rack.

She blinks bleary, beautiful eyes at me. Maybe it’s the wine, but I read a question in them, and answer it. “I’m staying,” I tell her, and she wraps her arms around me in a giddy, impulsive hug. She must have known what Peeta was going to ask me tonight – and is undeniably pleased by my decision.

I suspect we might be friends, this stunning, silent girl and I, or at least, well on our way.

She unpins my hair and brushes it all over one shoulder in a sleek black stream – the residue of bath oil left it fragrant with spicy flowers and impossibly soft – then turns back the covers while I slip on a nightgown of downy pearl-gray wool. Much to my surprise, the bedding has been changed since my nap this afternoon. The fox fur coverlet and other blankets are still in place as usual, but my sheets and pillowcases are now made of a supple, suede-like material in a pale, buttery gold. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before, but I’ve handled enough hides for my fingers to identify it.

It’s deerskin. Peeta’s given me bedsheets made of _deerskin_.

 _Granny Ashpet was married in deerskin,_ I think dreamily. Not at the Justice Building, of course; even she would never have flouted the Peacekeepers in so bold and foolish a fashion. She wore deerskin at her toasting: the hides of two perfect does, fleshed and tanned by her own strong hands and worked till they yielded an ivory leather softer than velvet.

As the story goes, she began work on her bridal doeskins long before she consented to marry Grandpa Asa. A proud, passionately independent woman, she’d set her sights on him far sooner than he realized, but if he hadn’t caught her unawares in the shack by the lake, singing to herself as she sewed a doeskin dress for a wedding she’d refused vehemently at every asking, she might _never_ have admitted the extent of her feelings.

 _The moral of that story,_ Dad told me with a chuckle, _is that it’s not always bad for a huntress to be caught_ – though, of course, he’d had a vested interest in that particular hunt.

“Deerskin?” I ask Lavinia, raising my brows.

She chuckles throatily and mimes drawing a bow. Of course. A gift for Peeta’s huntress. No doubt, he’d bought them a month or more ago and kept them carefully hidden till the day of my first hunt. I shake my head at the sweet, ridiculous boy who thinks of gifts I can’t even _imagine_.

Lavinia eases the warming pan out from between the pale golden sheets – I moan at the thought of warm supple deerskin against my bare feet – but I stop her before she can take it away. “Leave it?” I ask impulsively. “Just for a little?”

She arches one perfect brow curiously but shrugs and leaves the pan where it is.

I might well be out of my mind, but I heft the long wooden handle with both hands and carry the coal-pan over the pelts to the other side of the bed. The side where my unseen companion will sleep once the lights are out.

I lift the covers with one hand and slip the warming pan under with the other. Whoever they are, I want them to have warm supple deerskin against their feet too. Whoever they are, I want them to know they’re welcome here.

I turn back the covers a little ways in what seems to be an inviting fashion and make sure that the pan’s handle is clearly visible from the bedside, then I rummage through as many of the pillows as I can reach, seeking out the nicest ones. My companion gets into bed in firelit darkness, after all, and barely moves once they’re lying down. That doesn’t allow for much choice in pillows.

I find the two softest feather pillows, both cased in buttery deerskin, and one of my small, precious pine needle pillows, which I lay about two hand-widths from the edge of the bed, where I imagine my companion’s cheek will rest. Maybe they’d like to breathe in sweet pine as they sleep.

When I look up at last, Lavinia is staring back at me, wide-eyed. This is the first I’ve acknowledged my midnight companion, to her or to _anyone_ , and I can’t tell whether it’s my awareness that shocked her or the lengths I went to for a stranger’s comfort.

I wonder if it might _be_ her.

I come back around to climb in my own side of the bed, and she tucks me in with a light kiss to my forehead. Her surprise has faded to a careful mask, but as she turns back to shut off the lights, I see the ghost of a smile curving her lips.

I burrow my toes greedily between sheets of warm deerskin and wait, but not in fear.

I’m on the drowsy edge of slumber when my companion comes in at last, and I wonder how they know to time their arrival so precisely. Could it be, they’re simply busy each night for an hour or so past when I go to bed?

I count their footfalls on the pelts and catch my breath at their soft gasp of surprise as they reach the other side of the bed. Are they happy at what I’ve done? Or angry to discover that I’m aware of their presence?

They turn the covers back and carefully slide out the warming pan, and for a few breathless seconds I wonder whether they’ll bring it around to leave on the hearth. That would put them between me and the fireplace – directly in my line of vision, albeit by low-burning firelight.

But they don’t. They set the pan somewhere on their side of the room – a strange thought, for an invisible companion to own a side of my room – then, as on the past three nights, they undress and get into bed, with as little noise and movement as possible.

I sigh as their weight settles on the mattress behind me. I’m not afraid of them in the least tonight and can’t help wondering why I had been before. Their presence in my bed is a comfort, as much as the pine needle pillows and furs and warmed deerskin sheets…and as welcome.

 _I like this place,_ I tell them silently as I bury my yawning face in a deerskin-cased pillow. _I belong here._

_I belong…_

* * *

_I dream that I’m running through the woods, dressed in shadow and wind. I wear a weightless garment of silvery gray that dances about me like a curl of smoke and leaves my legs bare, and my hair is silken-smooth, unfurling behind me like a banner. My sheath of arrows lies across my back and there is a bow in my hand: a graceful sliver of silver and iridescent pearl._

_It’s the very end of autumn. The treetops above me are vibrant with red and gold, but the frosty ground crunches pleasantly beneath my bare feet, and I drink in the sweet smell of decaying leaves with each breath. It feels amazing: my rapid, fluid strides; the scents of leaves and frost; the chill in the breeze that pinks my cheeks and tangles my hair._

_I don’t know whether I’m pursuing something or something’s pursuing_ me _, but somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. I feel radiant and blissful as I race among the trees, fleet and agile as a doe._

_I’m broadsided suddenly and tumble to the ground, but it doesn’t hurt. A cougar stands over me, sleek and sinewy and powerful, and places her big forepaws on my chest. Her eyes, wide and green-gold, gaze solemnly into mine, and she speaks with a woman’s voice – a voice I’ve never heard before, yet I recognize at once._

_“Remember, catkin,” Granny Ashpet says, “it’s not always bad for a huntress to be caught. Especially when she loves her pursuer.”_

_I stare up at her in puzzlement, and she lowers her head to give my cheek one brisk lick with her rough tongue – I think it’s meant in affection – then she turns to look over her shoulder at something and bounds away, loping bonelessly into the shadows._

_I sit up, frowning, to see a swath of dusty golden light approaching from the direction I had come, moving slow and steadily between the trees, as light seems to sometimes when clouds pass over the sun. I regain my footing and nock an arrow in my silver bow – it’s surprisingly sturdy in my hands, despite its feather-light heft and elaborate pearl inlay – but somehow I can’t make myself take aim at the strange beam of light._

_As I watch, the light condenses into the form of a golden young man, stocky and thick with muscle – and unarmed. He wears boots and a pair of soft brown trousers, but from the waist up his body is bare and his creamy skin beautifully patterned in a dozen shades of brown and gold. His eyes are traced with bronze, his lips stained a ruddy brown, and his nipples painted a rich metallic gold._

_He shakes off his residue of light as I might shake mud from a shoe then continues toward me at an eager pace, as though he can’t bear a moment’s delay._

_“I’ve made something for you,” he says, his lips curving upward in a gentle, jubilant smile. He gestures toward the edge of the woods and, curious in spite of myself, I follow him there._

_The trees open upon a broad rock ledge overlooking the lake below, and on the ledge is a bed formed of willow saplings: a willow cradle of sorts, shaped like an enormous seed-pod and big enough for two people, with a mattress and pillows of soft green moss and a coverlet of white bear’s fur._

_At the foot-end of the bed is a large golden tray filled with food; the boy sits to one side of it and beckons for me to join him. There’s warm honey-bread with a crock of honey butter; strong coffee mellowed with rich measures of cream and honey; blushing yellow apples with honeylike flesh; and roasted nuts with honey for dipping – in a familiar little honeypot, full to the brim with shimmering liquid gold. There’s even a generous piece of honeycomb, saturated with golden sweetness._

_I sit opposite the boy and he proceeds to feed me with his own hands, cutting wedges of bread with a little gold-handled knife and spreading them with honey butter, then slicing apples and drizzling them with honey, and handing each to me, one after another. There must be half a dozen kinds of honey here – fragrant clover honey, robust wildflower honey, even spicy pine honey – and all delicious beyond compare. The boy dips an almond in the humble little honeypot and raises it to my mouth; I take it carefully between my lips and, in turn, break off a bit of honeycomb and bring the golden, waxy crumbles to his lips. The boy takes the bite with a shy smile and I start a little at the moisture of his mouth and the warmth of his breath on my fingers._

_In true dream fashion, our hands never get sticky._

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, _says a voice in my head – a man’s voice, competent and oddly familiar, like the honeypot. This boy is seemingly_ made _of honey. His thick, curling hair is spun from it. Beneath its patterns of brown and gold, his pale skin bears whispers of honey as well: tiny threads of crystallized honey dusting his arms and chest and framing his brilliant blue eyes. I watch those long golden fringes dance as he serves me a banquet of honey._

_I wonder if he tastes sweet, this boy made of honey and cream. He smells of both, and of woodsmoke and cloves and bread. I want to lean closer, to tuck my face into the curve of his strong neck and breathe him in till his scent radiates from my own pores._

_Sometimes it’s pleasant for a huntress to be caught._

_We finish the meal, feeding each other with increasingly bashful hands, and when the last crumb is gone the boy turns to look at something in the sky. I follow his line of vision and gaze on a breathtaking sunset: gentle layers of yellow and lavender and soft coral-pink, bedded down beneath a coverlet of feathery deep blue – the very shade of the golden boy’s eyes. The sun must have come down while I was in the woods, for it is no longer visible in the sky, but the painted horizon is no less lovely for its absence._

_The boy inches backward, tugging a moss-pillow forward to cushion his honey-curled head, and lies back with a deep, contented sigh. He’s still looking up, but I can’t tell whether his eyes are on the sunset or on me._

_Whichever it is, my cheeks answer with a blush._

_He gives me a sleepy smile in return and tugs down the bearskin coverlet to crawl beneath it, not unlike a child overdue for his bed. “I’ll paint you another one tomorrow,” he murmurs, yawning, as he curls up like a mousekin in its nest, tucking one strong hand beneath his chin on the moss-pillow._

_His fingers are stained with sunset. Oranges and purples and deep rose-pinks, smudged over the intricate patterns of gold and brown that extend all the way to his fingertips._

_I watch him, listening to his breath slow and deepen, and realize he’s fallen asleep beside me._

_He knows I’m a huntress, this beautiful boy of sunset and gold and cream. A swift, lethal shadow of silver and smoke, with a bow and arrows strapped to my back – and yet he slumbers beside me unafraid. He knows I’m wild; feral, even – more beast than girl – and yet he didn’t shrink from me. He fed me with his own hands and ate honeycomb from my fingers._

_This boy is a terrible hunter, I realize. You can’t catch a lynx by following it around the woods, then inviting it into a place of fine food and luxury._

_And yet, here I sit._

_He’s a trapper, then – but no, that doesn’t work either. He has no interest in my flesh or my pelt. I’m not sure he wants_ anything _from me._

 _I know this boy, or_ of _him, at least. I’ve watched him from my small downy bed, leaving food scraps in his garden for the birds and feeding a chipmunk from his hand. He entices them to him with food – with_ love _, I think – but it’s not a trap. He doesn’t want to skin or eat them. He brings them close so he can give them even_ more _._

_His head sinks a little in slumber, and he murmurs what might be my name. He’s close to me in this snug willow cradle, so very close, separated only by a layer of thick white fur. Even beneath the coverlet, his golden body radiates warmth._

_I glance up at the sky again. It’s twilight – a fine hour for hunting, with plenty of plump, careless game on the trails – and I grow stronger with nightfall; brighter, more beautiful, even. But somehow, I don’t want to move. Somehow, I’m exactly where I want to be._

_Somehow, at this moment, the only thing I want in all the world is lying next to me._

_I unstrap the bow and arrow-sheath from my back and turn back the bearskin coverlet. As an afterthought, I slip out of my gray cloud-garment as well. Beneath it, my skin is dark and cool as dusk, my breasts small and tipped with silver._

_I crawl beneath the fur and press myself to the golden boy’s body, slipping my arms about his waist and twining my fingers behind his broad back. A soft cry leaves my lips as our skins touch; he’s so exquisitely warm that my very bones seem to melt._

_He gives a quiet moan in reply and wraps his strong arms around me, cradling me to him just as soundly as the willow-bed cradles us both. “So beautiful,” he murmurs against my brow, as much a kiss as spoken words._

_I curl one bare leg over his hip to bring myself closer still and drink him in with deep hungry breaths. The honey and cream of his skin, coupled with a warm earthy musk that makes me part my lips against his throat and tighten my leg at his waist. The sweet tang of his breath, half honeyed coffee, half spiced wine._

_His sunset-stained fingers stroke the cool skin of my back, at once lulling and awakening me. All about us is darkness now, vibrant and resonant and brilliantly black, though white flames flicker at the corners of my eyes._

_“You’re a terrible hunter,” I whisper. I try to laugh – at him? at the absurdity of the situation? – but the sound catches in my throat._

_“I’m not a hunter at all,” he whispers back, gently combing his fingers through my hair. “I bake and paint and help things grow._ You’re _the huntress,” he says, and I hear the smile in his voice. “_ My _huntress._ You _caught_ me _.”_

_“I didn’t,” I protest, but I can’t bring myself to pull away from him. I wonder if I ever will._

_“Then why am I lying in your arms?” he asks softly._

_And I understand the tale at last. The sun doesn’t get the better of the moon. She isn’t overconfident and she doesn’t “let” him catch her. He follows her, day after day after day, so constant and golden and_ good _, bringing warmth and color and life to everything she looks on. He waits and paints and longs, but he doesn’t interfere or encroach. Not the gentle, patient sun._

 _It’s she who acts –_ she _who moves. One brave day, the tiny silver moon turns to embrace her golden lover, and her love – so longed-for, so unexpected, so_ fierce _– eclipses the sun._

_I wonder if he means to fill my womb with stars, this golden boy, and consider how exquisite it would be to take his brightness inside me. For my belly to grow round and heavy as a harvest moon, turned golden by his light…by his child. For my tiny breasts to swell with milk to suckle his star-babes._

_Surely the moon would burst to contain the sun._

_The blackness around us is softer now, like a canopy of velvet draped over our willow cradle, and so quiet. The white flames at the edges of my vision have faded to stars, pinpricks of light spangling the darkness, and I feel impossibly_ good _. Warm and content and truly, deeply_ happy, _down to the marrow of my bones._

_“Is this what happens,” I whisper, “when the moon falls in love with the sun?”_

_“I hope so,” answers the boy in my arms, gently brushing a tear from my cheek. “I truly hope so.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the end of Act One (of three) of this fic. I hadn’t originally planned on a three-act story, but the more I thought about it, the better it fits. By the end of this chapter, the board is set, if you will. 
> 
> Act Two will move ahead a little quicker (at this point I’m estimating about seven chapters, each one jumping ahead a few weeks or even a month in Katniss and Peeta’s timeline) and culminating in the Big Huge Plot Twist that I’m keeping under wraps, which leads directly into Act Three. Act Three will be the shortest and, no surprise, where the climax of the story will fall, followed by (I promise!) a very nice resolution and a ridiculously overlong epilogue. :D
> 
> A few readers have asked me about the M rating, so I thought I’d comment on it here, in case anyone else is wondering. Katniss and Peeta are very much headed for an intimate physical relationship; not immediately, of course, but they’ll definitely get there (which hopefully this chapter helped to imply?), and it will be sensuous and lovely (I hope!). I don’t foresee there being language, violence, dark stuff, etc. that would go beyond a T rating, so you can rest easy in that respect. :D 
> 
> In the meantime, come check me out on Tumblr (porchwood) for WtM geekery and visual inspirations as well as general coziness and fairy tales!


	11. Scarlet Ribbons (December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, in Act Two the chapters move ahead a bit quicker. Each one should roughly encapsulate a month at Peeta’s house, and this one is December. It’s entirely too long (easily four chapters’ worth of text) and three-fourths of it could probably have been condensed or moved to a subsequent chapter or cut entirely, but at the end of the day, that was the story I wanted to tell, full of nods and echoes and tangents and dreams. It’s a pretty significant chapter in Peeta and Katniss’s life together, and I truly hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed preparing it for you.
> 
> **Minor trigger warning, just in case: there's a hunting and butchering sequence about a third of the way through this chapter. It's not graphic, but I won't be heartbroken if you feel the need to skip it.**

_The days rolled on. [The girl] had everything she could ask for._  
_And, each evening, the bear would come and sit by her side.  
__~ East of the Sun, West of the Moon,_ retold by Susanna Davidson

True to his word, Peeta takes me out skiing the very next day.

He repeats his offer over a breakfast of pumpkin pie – liberally blanketed with whipped cream and cinnamon-honey sauce – honeyed cream-coffee, sausages, and fried eggs on hearty rye toast. “If you’d rather hunt this morning, I understand,” he says, but I’m already shaking my head in reply. After last night’s feast, I’m in desperate need of some exertion, not to mention I’m curious about this talent of Peeta’s at something I’ve never even heard of before.

A peek out the back door reveals the day to be bright and windless, but the air has turned bitterly cold since yesterday’s snowfall. Peeta offers to postpone our outing – and my hunting ventures – till it warms up a bit, but I assure him that I’ll be fine if he is. After all, I’ve hunted on far colder days, wearing much poorer clothing as I hiked through the woods, knee-deep in snow, seeking any flesh-and-blood creature to bring home for my starving family’s table. I’m no stranger to wind-burned cheeks and hands so dry that the skin cracked and bled.

I suspect I could survive a raging blizzard in my fine wool coat lined with plush bearskin, to say nothing of these tall fleecy boots, fur-lined gloves, and scarf and cap woven from rabbit hair.

Peeta dons his heavy bearskin along with a well-worn brown wool stocking cap; leather gloves that were clearly passed down from another Mellark, maybe even his father; and a pair of stout boots. I try not to watch too closely as he does up the laces. His false foot doesn’t look any different in a sock, but I can’t help wondering if it’s strange to tie laces over a prosthesis. Or how he decides that it’s too tight if there’s no flesh beneath for the laces to pinch.

He turns up his collar as he gets to his feet, but he has no scarf on beneath to protect his throat. I remember that my snowman still wears Peeta’s cheery red scarf and wonder if that could possibly be the only one this wealthy boy owns himself.

“That’s no good,” I chide, and rummage in the niches till I find one of my old scarves from home – one of Dad’s, really. The dull gray wool is pilled and snagged and worn thin in patches – even worse than Peeta’s stocking cap – but it’s much better than nothing at all. “Here,” I say, turning down Peeta’s fur collar and wrapping the scarf carefully around every inch of his neck, mouth, and nose, like I used to do for Prim. Our walk to school was a long one, and frost can bite the tiniest exposed patches of skin.

“We don’t want you getting frostbite – or catching cold,” I say to his wide blue eyes, the only bit of his face still visible after my thorough bundling, and he catches and squeezes my gloved hands in his.

“Thank you, Katniss,” he says. His words are muffled by the scarf, but I hear warmth and gratitude in them.

Snugly bundled in wool and furs, we make our way out to the stable, where Pollux already has Peeta’s skis waiting for us. He’s mucking out Rye’s stall and whistling like a songbird, and he pauses in his shoveling to give us a little wave in greeting.

The skis are just as Peeta described them: slender, lightweight runners of sleek burnished wood, longer than Peeta is tall, with a pair of straps about halfway along each one. They strike me as a variation on my skates, or maybe my skates are a variation on _them_.

Peeta hands me the poles – they’re about waist-high on me, with a point on the end and a small circular frame a few inches above – and he carries the skis outside. He straps his booted feet onto the runners, exactly as I do with my skates, with a practiced ease, then he takes the poles from me and gestures behind him with the handle of one.

“Hop on,” he says through my father’s scarf. His eyes are bright above the gray wool, even merry.

I look from his face to the skis and shake my head. I’m pretty sure I can stay on them without straps, but if I understand the principle correctly, every time Peeta moves a foot forward, he’ll be pulling my weight behind him. “You can’t pull me too,” I tell him. “You go on ahead; I’ll walk along and watch.”

He gives a little chortle of laughter. “Katniss, you’re a _feather_ ,” he says. “You weigh less than one of these runners. Hop on; it’ll be fine.”

I scowl at this behind my scarf, but I can tell he’s determined so I comply, stepping carefully to place my feet on the skis, close behind his. “Hold on to me,” he says over one shoulder. His voice is soft and a little hoarse, even through the scarf.

I hadn’t thought about this part – about having to hold on to Peeta while I follow and learn – but it only makes sense. I remind myself that I hugged him twice yesterday; much to his dismay, I’m sure, but he’s _telling_ me to do this, so there should be nothing strange or uncomfortable about it.

I gingerly take hold of his waist, curling my gloved fingers around the fur of his coat. “Tighter,” he says without looking at me. “We’ll go slow, but I don’t want you to fall.”

His back and shoulders are a sea of welcoming white bearskin, and I don’t need to be told twice. I slip my arms around his waist and pull myself flush against his back, burrowing my face into thick, soft fur and the resonant whisper of Peeta’s glorious body heat beneath.

I remember hugging a white bear around the neck in a dream; remember sitting astride his broad back and tucking my hands and face into his lush fur for warmth. I remember breathing in the scents of ice and pine and the musk of a young man’s body, not a bear’s.

Hugging Peeta from behind encompasses all of those imagined blisses, and then some. I wonder if we could stay like this forever: my arms wrapped around his torso and my hips resting against his backside; my face pressed into fur so deep I could drown in it.

Peeta gives a little groan and rests a hand on both of mine where they lie, clasped over his stomach. “That’s…g-good,” he says. “B-Bend your knees a little and…and shift your weight from one foot to the other when you feel me move.” He brings a pole to either side of him and presses their pointed ends into the ice-crusted snow with a soft crunch, then he bends his knees and his left leg, and mine, slide _slowly_ forward.

Our first combined movements are small and stilted. I can tell he’s trying hard not to trip up my shorter legs or make me lose my footing, but my body contours quickly to his, leaning even closer to follow the rhythm of his strong limbs. His left leg moves fluidly, making subtle shifts in direction as we glide into the woods, while his right – the prosthesis – makes short, sharp movements, driven by his knee, like a kickoff to maintain balance and momentum. The muscles over his ribs dance beneath my forearms as our combined weight shifts from side to side.

Skiing is faster than snowshoeing but slower than skating, albeit easier for balance with the wider runners and poles, and my body takes to it with equal delight. We move through the woods in quiet tandem, like a heavily furred four-legged creature that can glide, hushed as a snake, over snow. If this is how Peeta gets around in winter – a hulking form of broad muscle and bearskin, passing among the trees like a swift white shadow – I’m not surprised that all of the predators have moved on. I’d have been terrified myself at a glimpse of such a creature, even with a good bow in my hand.

We don’t talk much as we go, save for a “You okay?” or “How’s it going?” from Peeta now and again, and after a quarter-hour or so I spoon myself tightly to his back and lean up a little to rest my chin on his shoulder. After being nestled like a fox kit in the warmth of his bearskin, my face stings at the burst of blindingly cold air.

“Are _you_ okay?” I ask his scarf-covered cheek. My legs are following his of their own volition now; I don’t have to think or even consciously anticipate his stride any longer. But it must be wearing on him, however light he thinks I am, to have me hanging at his waist. “Do you want to take a break – or turn back for the day?”

He chuckles and I feel it deep in my chest, where my breastbone presses along his spine. “I was thinking about it,” he replies, “but I have an idea about the trip home. How do you feel about skiing so far?”

“I love it,” I admit, and assure myself that it has nothing to do with the warm bulk of a fur-bundled Peeta in my arms, nor the easy, coordinated movements of our limbs.

“Good,” he says, stopping us abruptly as we move into a clearing. “Because you’re leading on the way back.”

He looks over his shoulder at me. I can’t see his mouth, of course, but his eyes are grinning. “That’s very funny,” I answer dryly. “Seeing as there’s no way _I_ can pull _you_ , even on runners.” The image this evokes – of Lady pulling Peeta’s sleigh instead of Rye – is almost laughable.

Come to think of it, I’m more like Buttercup than Lady. A kitchen cat in a pony’s traces, attempting to pull a wagonload of goods.

Peeta tugs down his scarf with the handle of one pole. His cheeks are bright with exertion and cold and the widest smile I’ve ever seen on his face. “You won’t have to,” he says cheerfully. “You’re going to stand on my feet, and I’ll move us both.”

This is an even worse idea than pulling me behind him, and I tell him as much in no uncertain terms, but once again, he’s not taking no for an answer. “You’ll navigate, and I’ll push with you,” he explains. “You put your hands on mine on the poles. You guide us, and I’ll do all the work.”

I shake my head against his shoulder and cinch my arms even tighter at his waist, and he gives a strange, choked laugh in reply. “I won’t make you,” he says quietly, his eyes softening. “I thought you might enjoy it, is all, but if…if you don’t want to…”

I can’t honestly say that I don’t. It’ll be colder in front, but no worse than when I’m skating, really.

“You won’t hurt my feet,” he adds with a crooked smile. “I only have one as it is, and these boots are plenty sturdy. Not to mention, you’re light as a chickadee.”

“Okay,” I concede, and peel my body free from his with a reluctance that’s almost painful, like tearing the scab from a newly clotted wound – though I can’t think why pressing my body to Peeta’s should feel anything like the beginning of healing.

He steps in a tight circle to turn the skis toward home and guides me up onto the runners in front of him, so my heels rest on his toes. Then he hands me the poles and – to my surprise and utter confusion – begins unfastening his coat. “Peeta, what are you _doing_?” I ask, aghast. “You’ll catch your death –!”

My words break off in a startled gasp as his big hands cover my hips and scoot me backwards, so our bodies are flush once more – the reverse of how they were earlier, with his solid chest bracing my back and his hips nestled against my backside.

“That’s better,” he says, and begins refastening the bearskin, waist to knees, around _both_ of us.

“ _Oh_ ,” I say – or rather, sigh. Holding Peeta from behind was nothing to this. Now I’m tucked between the radiant heat of his body and the heavy plushness of white bear’s fur, warmed by its contact with him. My head lolls back a little, sinking into the cavernous fur-lined hood of my own coat. I’m not altogether sure I _can_ move – and quite certain I don’t want to.

Peeta chuckles, a hum against my fur-cushioned cheek. “Um, Katniss?” he says, sounding amused, and nudges my left knee with his. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I shake off the strange, sleepy bliss that engulfed me along with his bearskin and peer around the edge of my hood to scowl at him. “Pull your scarf up,” I tell him sternly. “If I’m as little as you claim, I won’t make for much of a windbreak.”

He laughs at that, an unexpected joyous burst. “Duly noted,” he says, and I feel his hand go to his face for a moment before he takes the poles back from me and stands them to either side of us. I put a hand squarely on each of his and we set off.

It takes a few minutes to work out the rhythm of the poles, but as he promised, Peeta’s doing all of the work; my hands are there to guide him, nothing more. It’s a little astonishing to feel those small hands directing such force. I suspect Peeta could propel us home without the runners, so powerful are the strokes of his arms with the poles.

And I barely even need to move my legs. Peeta’s pressed so tightly to me that our legs slide forward as one, striding fluidly over the crisp snow. I don’t doubt for a moment that I could go entirely limp against him and it wouldn’t slow our progress at all – though, of course, I wouldn’t do that. Peeta’s clearly following the rhythm of my shorter-legged strides, but I’m trying to match the pace he set on the way out, for his own comfort. Long fluid glide on the left foot; sharp kickoff on the right.

“Katniss,” he murmurs against my hood, making the fur lining tickle my cheek. “You can make a long stride with your right foot, too.”

“I know,” I reply, wondering what sort of fool he takes me for. “This way is easier for you, though, right?”

He gives that strange choked laugh again. “Yes,” he says softly, and leans forward to rest his cheek against mine. Our skin is separated by layers of wool and thick fur, but I swear I can still feel his warmth – and sigh at it.

The trip back takes noticeably longer than the trip out, and I tell myself it’s because of my inexpert leading and the extra resistance of my weight against Peeta, not any reluctance on my part for the “lesson” to be over, nor a deliberate slowing of our pace. My breath frosts in my downy scarf, and the wool slips down a little to expose the tip of my nose to the brittle air, but I don’t care, and I don’t take my hands away from Peeta’s to tug it back up. Never mind how cold it is: I could move like this, my legs aligned with his as our skis whisper over the snow, for hours on end, relishing the firm warmth of his chest and hips pressed close behind me and the double-layer of plush bearskin holding me back against him.

We disentangle at the stable, and it’s even harder to forsake the combined warmth of his body and the bearskin than it was to let go of his torso and the cushion of fur beneath my face, but I tell myself I’m just being silly as I hop off the runners and crouch down to unstrap his feet. We’ve enjoyed a wonderful morning in the woods; trying to prolong it is just plain greedy of me. 

Pollux takes the skis and poles with a wink and Peeta and I return to the house, our cheeks and noses burning pleasantly from the cold, but instead of unbundling in the mudroom, he stamps the snow from his boots and leads me straight through to the living room.

I defiantly ignore the shiver in my belly at the thought that he might mean to massage my feet again.

Once we’re in front of the fire, Peeta methodically sheds his layers and I follow suit, eager for the warmth of the flames on my skin. He seats me on the sofa and bends to remove my boots and socks, making my breath catch in anticipation, then he quirks a brow at me, lowers my bare feet to the floor, and comes to sit on the opposite side of the sofa.

Disappointment wrings my heart like a dishcloth. I remind myself of how ridiculous it is to expect Peeta Mellark to rub my feet, but it doesn’t take the sting away. I look at his face – he’s watching me with a curious sort of amusement – then down at _his_ feet, which are still laced securely inside his boots.

 _Maybe he means for_ me _to tend to_ him _,_ I think. _Which would only be fair, really._ I’m about to slip from the cushion and oblige when, without warning, he leans forward to catch up my feet and tug them into his lap, pivoting me sideways on the sofa. I give a startlingly girlish cry, half a laugh and half a shriek, that reminds me of the squeals made by Merchant girls when their sweethearts catch them from behind on winter days and press icy kisses to their necks, then Peeta raises my feet a little and bends to pepper them all over, ankles to chilly toes, with quick, enthusiastic kisses.

My legs jerk wildly against the warm anchors of his hands, but I don’t know whether it’s an action of evasion or delight. “Peeta!” I gasp. “What are you _doing_?”

He presses his cheek against the sole of one foot and gazes up at me with eyes so radiantly happy that it makes my chest hurt. “You’re going to stay with me,” he says softly.

“Yes…” I reply, confused and breathless. He’s known this since last night, and it certainly didn’t make him go crazy then.

“You _want_ to stay with me,” he whispers.

For some reason this makes my lips curl upward in a smile and my eyes sting with tears. “Yes,” I whisper back.

He gives a broken little laugh and turns to press a lingering kiss to the arch of my foot. My leg trembles so violently that it’s a miracle I don’t kick him in the face – and a greater miracle still that he then lowers both feet to his lap and proceeds to lavish them with deep, thorough strokes of his strong hands. “Let me do something for you,” he pleads, tracing my arches with his thumbs in a way that makes my knees fall open and my shoulders prickle with goosebumps of pleasure. “Let me make you something; anything you like,” he says. “ _Please_.”

I gaze at the beautiful boy tending to my small callused feet as though they were priceless treasures and give a broken laugh of my own. “Peanut butter cookies?” I suggest.

It feels at once far too much to ask and not nearly enough, but Peeta grins in reply. “I have an even better idea,” he says.

He takes me into the kitchen and startles me with another unexpected gesture: lifting me by the hips and sitting me on the worktop, alongside his enormous copper stove. “Stay just there,” he tells me with mock-sternness as he switches on one of the ovens and, as though for emphasis, sets a large mixing bowl atop my knees. As I watch in laughter and disbelief, he fills my lap with food: butter – _so much_ butter – and sugar, both brown and white; silky baker’s flour and eggs and generous dollops of peanut butter, so rich and creamy that my mouth waters at the merest whiff. After every step he steals the bowl for a minute or two of blending, and when all the ingredients are thoroughly combined he gives me a wink and goes to the pantry once more.

He returns, beaming, with his tin of milk chocolate and proceeds to coarsely chop what must be half a pound of delicious luxury, then adds it to the bowl. He folds the chocolate chunks into the cookie mixture and raises a spoon-tip’s worth of the resulting batter to my lips.

“That’s not cooked,” I say dubiously, frowning, though the smell of the batter is downright intoxicating, and I’d like nothing more than to gobble it up this very second.

“I didn’t think my huntress would be opposed to taking a meal raw now and again,” he teases, but is quick to reassure me in the next breath: “It’s fine, I promise. Much better than fine, in fact,” he adds, playfully nudging my stubborn mouth with the spoon in the very same way that Dad used to entice Prim to take spoonfuls of Mom’s pungent cough syrup.

I part my lips and take a careful lick of something much, _much_ better than cough syrup.

Peeta laughs at my groan of pleasure and offers me a proper spoonful, which I devour without hesitation. “It’s good, isn’t it?” he says. “We all – Marko and Luka and I – loved to steal pinches of dough and fingerfuls of batter, but Mom would wallop our backsides if she saw,” he explains, his voice shaking a little as though, even now, he half-expects to be punished. “So Dad figured out a way around her,” he says, his eyes glinting merrily. “Anytime he was making something sweet – cake batter, cookie dough, pie filling – he’d send one of us straight to the sink with the bowl, which always had just a little extra left at the bottom. You had to eat it quick, of course, but it was always the best thing you’d ever tasted.”

He smiles, shaking his head, and feeds me another spoonful. “One of the first things I did once I got settled out here was make a big batch of cookie dough and eat it all,” he confesses. “I got wretchedly sick and couldn’t look at brown sugar or eggs for a good month after that,” he adds, laughing. “So I wouldn’t recommend going overboard, but a few spoonfuls are a taster’s prerogative.”

He turns to get two baking pans and I steal a yet another spoonful, then he sets the pans on either side of me and begins expertly rolling tiny lumps of dough between his broad palms, shaping dozens of perfect golden dough-balls to cover the pans. When this is done, he flattens each one slightly with a fork, leaving the now-familiar cross-hatch pattern on their tops, and together we clean up the bowl’s leavings with eager finger-swipes.

The cookies go in the oven then, but Peeta still doesn’t let me off the worktop. Instead I watch, bemused, as he makes trips to the icebox and pantry, assembling a tray of food. He starts with several thick slices of last night’s wonderful acorn bread, spreading them with a grainy mustard so mouthwateringly sharp that I can smell it from my perch, then heaping them high with perfect bites of cold roast turkey. He adds handfuls of honeyed almonds and plump cranberries to the tray, thick slices of a firm pale cheese with a sunny orange rind; even chunks of all three kinds of chocolate. Finally, he sets his little stovepot to brewing and pours a generous measure of cream into the tiny kettle that he uses to prepare our drinks.

“What would you like in your coffee?” he asks, setting the miniature feast across my knees.

I take two chunks of buttery white chocolate from the tray and drop them into the cream kettle with a quiet splash.

Peeta smiles. “I have an even better idea,” he says, and goes back to the pantry.

I pinch my thigh half a dozen times in the thirty seconds that he’s away, certain that this must be a dream.

* * *

The days that follow aren’t all quite so idyllic, but not one of them is less than perfect. Wondrous. Utterly beyond the imagination of the Katniss who shivered and starved in Twelve less than a week ago.

What once was luxury beyond my wildest dreams has somehow, and quickly, become routine.

Every morning I wake deliciously content and warm in my enormous woodland bed, tucked snugly between deerskin and furs. More often than not, I wake from dreams so beautiful that it seems impossible my mind – more familiar with fear and cold, poverty and grief – could have conjured them.

A boy who loves a bird. A white bear who loves a human girl. A golden-skinned maiden bathing in waterfalls by starlight. A beautiful cougar who speaks with my grandmother’s voice.

The huntress-moon sharing a feast of honey with the painter-sun, then shedding her shadow-gown to crawl beneath a white bearskin and take him in her arms.

I take to recording these dreams as soon as I wake, using precious sheets of paper from the desk in my “hobby room.” I write as small as possible as I frantically recall detail after detail and don’t let myself start a new page till every bit of white space on the previous one is covered, on both sides, with my cramped, crabbed writing. Part of that is thrift, of course, but I also _really_ don’t want to have to explain to Peeta where all his paper is going.

The truth, embarrassing though it may be, is that I don’t _want_ to forget these dreams – any part of them. I’ve had so many years of nightmares and hallucinations of food; to have a _good_ dream in a pleasant place is the most wonderful kind of surprise. A truly unexpected bliss. They’re like new fairy tales, these dreams, of the sort my father might have told me if he’d lived longer, and every few days I take the pages from the drawer in my nightstand and reread their strange, beautiful stories before going to sleep, half hoping to relive them in the night and half longing to dream a new tale for my collection. Even a few weeks ago, a good dream would have been bittersweet for the cruel awakening of cold and hunger that inevitably followed, but since I’ve come to live with Peeta, every morning I wake to a crackling fire and soft, beautiful clothing on the warming rack, snug slippers on the hearthstone, and the mouthwatering smells of a hot breakfast waiting for me in the kitchen.

Meals with Peeta are always hearty and delicious, and while he takes care to repeat those dishes that he (correctly) determines to be my favorites, he also ensures that no two meals are ever quite the same. Food is like a language with Peeta and just as nuanced as speech. At first all I can taste is luxury, then comfort, but after a week in his house I begin to taste subtler things, like happiness and affection, even humor. Every meal is like a painting, I discover, prepared to evoke a certain image or feeling. Most often I taste the spiced, sweet gold of autumn and sunset in his dishes, which is unsurprising as – I infer from the design of Peeta’s bedroom – it’s his favorite season and time of day, and I don’t mind it a bit. There’s something particularly exquisite about drinking in the ripe glory of autumn in the very dead of winter; about going to bed on the darkest, coldest night with earthy spices on my tongue and a belly full of sunset.

Breakfast is invariably enormous and fortifying, whereas lunch is lighter – but usually offered twice. If I go hunting, Peeta sends me off with a feast of cold foods in my lunch pouch, then prepares a second, modestly-sized hot meal while I’m gone – usually soup, fresh bread, and some sort of cozy baked sweet – for me to warm up with on my return. Supper is always rich and satisfying: a main course that I can’t get enough of, countless complementary side-dishes, and a dessert that bring tears of pleasure to my eyes.

Peeta always serves breakfast in the kitchen; the better to refill my plate with sausages and fresh griddle cakes, I suspect. Lunch is typically shared in the living room, sitting side by side on the sofa or with me on the cushion and Peeta on the low little table opposite. I take to playfully stealing things from his plate, as much for his reactions as for the tidbits of food, and after three such occurrences, he proffers his plate to me in between bites of his own. Supper is always an elegant affair in the dining room and might be followed by cream-coffee or hot chocolate on the porch or tea or cider by the fire. Peeta always makes dessert, and _always_ offers seconds.

My taste experience with breads is embarrassingly limited, and to rectify this, Peeta cheerfully devises a game. Every night before bed, I go to the kitchen and select three ingredients – herbs, nuts, cheese, fruit, a special kind of flour or grain – and set them on the counter, hidden beneath a dishtowel until morning. (If they need refrigeration, I leave a list instead.) The next day, Peeta comes down to a challenge: to make me a loaf of bread using those three things.

I warn him that I know next to nothing about breads and baking and will certainly come up with poor combinations, but he never fails to present me with a delicious new loaf that includes all of the ingredients I requested. My prevailing favorite features cranberries and a swirl of brown sugar and nutmeg, which Peeta serves toasted and spread with a sweet goat cheese, but there isn’t one that I wouldn’t beg for again and devour as soon as it was placed before me. Blackberry preserves, wheat berries, and bits of dark chocolate. Robust rye flour, made savory with crumbled bacon and mustard grains. Almonds, oats, and apple cider: a whimsical idea, chosen more as a joke, but Peeta does indeed manage to season dough with cider, and the resulting bread is the richest, most flavorful I’ve ever eaten in my life. Peeta cuts me a slice while the loaf is still piping hot at its core and slathers it with butter, and I breathe in sweet spiced steam with every greedy bite.

I wait for him to tire of our silly game, but he never does. After a week of it he gleefully suggests we try the same thing with cakes after New Year’s, and I narrowly bite back a moan of pleasure at the thought of a glorious new cake _every_ _day._

Weather permitting, my mornings are always spent outside. Game is so plentiful out here that I can hunt every other day and still keep the icebox stocked with fresh meat, but Peeta is pleasantly insistent that I spend as much time outdoors as I want, and there are plenty of other activities to fill the hours. I skate almost every morning, before or after hunting, and notice my legs growing stronger and sturdier with lean contours of well-nourished muscle. My overall endurance improves, seemingly overnight, thanks to a warm home, abundant meals, and mornings full of invigorating exercise. I can move faster and for longer periods of time without tiring, and as often as possible, I climb a tree to eat my packed lunch, to keep my new muscles limber.

More often than not I spend a portion of my morning with Pollux, who does his best to be friendly but unobtrusive. His days are even quieter than I had originally imagined, as I discover early one morning when I hear someone splitting firewood and look out the window to see Peeta at the chopping block, coatless and swinging the axe in powerful, even strokes. Peeta, Pollux explains later via his slate, does just about everything: chopping firewood, shoveling snow-paths, cooking, baking, even a good portion of the housework. _“Servant” was just an excuse to get us here,_ he writes. _He’d do everything himself if we let him._

As it is, Pollux is responsible for little more than the stable itself: Rye’s feeding and upkeep, the sleigh and cart, keeping the tools clean and sharp, and alternating trips to town with Lavinia. As a result, he’s more than happy to help in any way possible with the game I bring home: supplying hot water for washing and scalding carcasses, discarding and burning entrails for me, offering to clean up my knives and the workbench when I’m finished. He even helps me cobble together two crude but efficient frames for stretching and tanning my rabbit skins, proving himself a capable carpenter.

One morning I return from an especially cold hunt to find my knives laid out with a mug of _very_ black coffee beside them. Peeta never gives me plain coffee, and I look over my shoulder to see Pollux grooming Rye, pink-cheeked, offering a bashful smile in explanation. I blush in reply – Pollux’s and mine is a natural friendship, I suppose, but this is the first I’ve thought of our interactions in such a context – and take a grateful sip from the steaming mug, which nearly comes out again when the liquid hits my tongue. The coffee is fragrant but overwhelmingly strong; a bitter cup with potent notes of anise and cinnamon. I can’t think why _anyone_ would drink coffee this way, and then I remember that an Avox has no sense of taste. They rely on sight and smell to enjoy their food, and Pollux’s strong spiced coffee is, if nothing else, pleasantly aromatic.

When I tell Peeta about this at lunch, his first response is genuine surprise, though he laughs heartily at my reaction to Pollux’s brew. “He’s never even made _me_ coffee,” he says with a curious smile. “He adores you, you know. They both do.”

Two weeks ago I would have denied this or at least made a half-hearted protest, and while the idea of being _adored_ by Peeta’s Avoxes brings a blush to my cheeks, I feel the warmth most in my heart. I’ve never really had friends before. Both Gale and Madge were, in their own ways, necessary to my survival, but Pollux and Lavinia seem to interact with me simply because they _want_ to. Two silent people could be all but invisible on a property as large as this, and yet they make efforts to communicate with me whenever we encounter each other, even if only with a smile or a little wave across the room, and they’ll even seek me out from time to time. They _like_ me, or at least appreciate my company – or my voice – in this quiet house.

Lavinia is less “conversational” than Pollux, but she seems to look forward to our evenings together. Twice a week I shower in the beautiful waterfall cave and once a week I soak in the stone tub, and she is always there with my robe and slippers and plush, warmed towels, happy to ease me from comfort to comfort with hands as gentle as a healer’s. I look up one night as she leisurely brushes my hair to find her eyes closed, as though in pleasure, and wonder if she might enjoy tending to my hair almost as much as I enjoy her doing it. It makes sense, I suppose: brushing and braiding Prim’s hair was always a pleasant task for me, even when it was thin and brittle with malnutrition, and my hair has grown strong and silky after just a few weeks of rich food and luxurious Capitol soaps. I’m embarrassed by how often I toy with the smooth tail of my braid or run my fingers through the sleek length of my hair in the brief, unguarded moments when it hangs loose about my shoulders, and I can’t really fault Lavinia for savoring the same sensations, especially since she has no sister with hair to brush and braid.

She always warms my nightgown and sheets before I go to bed and tucks me in with all the care of a parent or older sibling. More often than not, she leaves me with a kiss on my forehead.

But of course, that’s only half of my bedtime ritual. Every night I take the warming pan from my side of the bed and carry it round to ease beneath the covers on the opposite side; to warm the sheets for my companion. I make sure they have an assortment of my very best pillows, all plumped up for their comfort, and turn the covers back a little in a welcoming fashion. I don’t know if they want or even _like_ all those things done for them, but once begun, I can’t imagine _not_ doing them. Since the night I decided to stay here, my unseen bed partner has become as much a part of my life as Pollux and Lavinia, maybe more so.

I discover almost immediately that I don’t sleep well until my companion has joined me, no matter how late I’ve stayed up or how tired I am. If I fall asleep before they arrive, it’s not a sound sleep, and I always wake again at the sound of the door opening, of footfalls on fur and clothing being removed. I tell myself it’s caution; instinct, maybe. It’s bizarre enough to be joined in bed every night by a silent stranger that you never see; sleeping through their arrival would be foolish in the extreme.

But I know better than that. It’s a matter of comfort, not concern. Reassurance, for both our sakes. If they’re later than usual, I lie, restless and anxious, and wait for them. For the whisper of blankets being drawn back, the soft sound of breath against the pillows, the slow radiance of warmth rising from the quiet darkness of their side of the bed, like a gentle dawn. Once they’ve arrived I fall asleep within minutes, wrapped in coal-warmed deerskin and fox fur and the strange bliss that accompanies my companion to our bed, and dream wondrous things.

Even though I know it must be one of the three other people who live here, I can’t help thinking of my companion as someone else entirely: a complete stranger whose presence in my bed brings absolute comfort. Sometimes I imagine it’s the white bear of my dreams, massive but gentle and devoted to my care, and smile to myself as the covers are tugged up once more, envisioning stout legs and a broad furry back and a muzzle on the pillows opposite mine. Such a thing must happen often enough in tales like the one I’m now living.

I never try to see my companion, speak to them, touch them, or acknowledge in any way that I’m aware they’ve arrived, and somehow I know it’s imperative that I don’t. Their response to my movements on my second night here made it clear that they’re terrified of discovery. But that doesn’t stop me arranging for their comfort in small ways before they come to my room. They are, in the truest sense of the word, my _companion_ , and to my way of thinking, should be treated to the same degree of care at bedtime as I am.

I always warm their sheets, plump their pillows, and turn back the blankets for them, but on very cold nights I also take an extra fur from the chest at the foot of the bed and fold it in half to cover their side. When they arrive they always unfold the fur again to spread it over the entire bed, covering us both, and I wake in the morning to find the same fur folded in half over _me_ and tucked snugly around my body, cocooning me in dense layers of plush warmth.

On nights when Peeta provides a bedtime snack – tea and some sort of baked sweet, usually on bathing nights – I save half of it for my companion and leave it on the nightstand on their side of the bed. I’m always awake when they arrive and listen with pleasure to their little gasp of surprise – or, as a pattern emerges, their quiet chuckle – followed by their weight settling on the edge of the bed as they sit and eat the food as noiselessly as possible. They must take the dishes with them when they leave, because the nightstand is always empty when I wake up.

On nights when I have no bedtime snack, I consider sneaking back to the kitchen for a cookie or a piece of fruit – who knows how often my companion eats? – but I could never steal food from Peeta, who feasts me at every meal. Asking outright for more would imply that he doesn’t give me enough already – a ludicrous thought – and of course, I can’t tell him the real reason I want it.

Peeta doesn’t know about my bed partner – or, at least, we’ve never spoken of it. Only Lavinia knows, and she seems to find my devotion to their needs amusing; even adorable. I wonder constantly if _she_ could be my unseen companion, and her amusement comes from the knowledge that it’s only _her_ in the darkness beside me; not a mysterious stranger, and certainly not someone in need of warmed sheets and baked sweets and an extra fur coverlet.

In the meantime, I find myself strangely satisfied with our nightly arrangement. My companion’s presence in my bed is an undeniable comfort, and for all I know, _they_ are what banished my nightmares of hunger and terror and my father’s violent death and replaced them with fairy tales, each so beautiful that it almost hurts to wake from them.

But the very best part of my day, if I’m honest, is the time I spend with Peeta. I’ve never been one for conversation but Peeta draws it out of me, like the sun warming a honeypot till its contents spill out, smooth and fluid and golden. Our lives, I learn, are like fairy tales to each other. Bows and rabbit skins and feasts of wild things are as foreign and enchanting to him as vanilla extract and cheese buns and enormous blazing ovens are to me.

Peeta has the added privilege of a large family and a full complement of stories about them. He tells me that his mother was a twin but her brother, a known brawler, was killed at sixteen in a knife fight with a couple of coal miners. Unsurprisingly, she’s been embittered toward Seam folk ever since. I learn that Peeta’s middle brother, Luka, was named after his unfortunate uncle and that – Peeta confesses this with blushes – any of them might father twins one day.

I know about his aunt Rooba, of course, but Peeta explains that she went through a merry succession of husbands – her own and other women’s – and lovers in her youth and has four grown children to show for it, who help her run the butcher shop. Peeta isn’t especially close to his cousins, he says, but they all get together for holidays and the occasional birthday and make small bets about how long it will take for Rooba, who has been widowed since her early thirties, though not without romantic attachments, to set her cap at her brother-in-law.

He tells me about his father’s brother Marek, a stocky red-cheeked bachelor who good-naturedly moved on to the shoe shop once all his nephews were old enough to put in a day’s work in the bakery. He’d been good friends with Georgy Cartwright – Delly’s father – since childhood, who was happy to give him a home and position when the new generation of Mellark boys began crowding him out.

Peeta explains that his grandparents had wanted many children, but something had gone wrong with Marek’s birthing and Grandma Lydda was never able to conceive again. I tell him in turn about Grandpa Asa dying young and Granny Ashpet losing her baby daughter – _Laurel_ , Dad told me once – in her grief.

I tell him why my father named me Katniss: how as a child he rooted out the plant’s lifesaving tubers to feed his grieving mother and made flower crowns of its blossoms to cheer her – and, years later, he ruined his work boots harvesting the last tubers of the season for his pregnant wife, who craved them more than anything money could buy. Peeta smiles a lot during that story, but his eyes are soft, almost wistful. He tells me afterward that he’s the first Mellark in three generations who wasn’t named for a relative but after a boy in one of his father’s favorite old tales; a boy with magical silver skates and a sharp-tongued sweetheart.

I tell him that my mother was an only child, and thus I have none of the colorful relations and stories that his large Merchant family provides, and he replies by telling me a breathtaking, bittersweet fairy tale about a childless couple who made themselves a daughter out of snow, with deep blue buttons for eyes and a bit of red ribbon for a mouth. She came to life, a beautiful human girl with skin as white as snow, and brought happiness to the couple all winter long, only to vanish in spring, melted by the sun’s heat. But every winter when the first snow fell, somehow, she returned to the couple once more.

“The Snow Maiden,” he says softly at the end. “Grandma Lydda told that story over the kitchen fire on snowy evenings, and until my dad was about six years old, he believed your mother was that girl. A snow-white girl with pale hair and blue eyes and a mouth like a scarlet ribbon.”

These words trigger something in my mind; a happy memory, but one I don’t want to share because of the blushes it raises. There’s an old folk song my father used to sing to my mother, a lover’s ballad:

 _How lovely you are, my darling_  
_How beautiful, my love_  
_Your eyes are like doves_  
_Your teeth are like sheep  
_ _Your mouth is a scarlet ribbon_

There are more verses too, at once silly and saucy, where the lover compares his beloved’s more intimate attributes to strange things, like fruits and trees and fawns. Dad would sometimes start one of those verses just to tease us – he knew it made Mom turn beet-red and me cover my ears and hide my face – but more than once I heard him whispering the words to Mom at night, punctuated by hushed panting breaths and the slow creaking of their bedsprings.

“What’s wrong?” Peeta asks with a small smile, clearly wondering what brought the sudden color to my cheeks and whether it’s something to be appreciated or apologized for. “Does it upset you, hearing about your mom and my dad when they were kids?”

I shake my head and color darker still. “It just…reminded me of a song my dad used to sing,” I say.

Peeta raises his brows with interest. “And…you’re not going to tell me about it?” he says, his tone more teasing than actual inquiry. He knows the answer already.

I shake my head even harder. “Someday, maybe,” I concede. After all, I’m here for the rest of my life, and Peeta can persuade with as little as a glance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets the story from me before the end of the month.

I spend the largest portion of my day with Peeta, albeit in small blocks of time, usually centered around a meal, and once I’ve convinced him that I won’t freeze or starve to death if he leaves me unattended and unfed for an hour or two, he slowly resumes the schedule that must have patterned his days before I came.

The first time this happens, I fly into a panic and nearly tear the house apart.

I return from a brief mid-morning hunt with two plump rabbits to show for it, and for the first time since I’ve come to live here, Peeta is neither there to meet me at the door nor in the kitchen making lunch. There’s a single place setting at the table, covered to keep the dishes warm, but no Peeta. There’s never _no Peeta_ at mealtime. It’s as though he’s vanished into thin air.

 _The Capitol!_ I think. _Hovercrafts and Peacekeepers with guns_ – but none of that could have happened without noise or a disturbance of some kind, and even if I managed not to hear it out in the woods, Pollux would have noticed and alerted me or, at the very least, Rye would have been agitated and fearful when I got back.

 _A wolverine?_ I wonder next, trembling and nauseous at the thought, never mind there are none in this area and they’re even less likely to have found their way into Peeta’s kitchen, let alone dragged him off. There’s no blood on the floor or in the sink, so it’s equally unlikely that he cut himself and is simply tending to the wound.

 _His leg,_ I think. Something happened and he fell, and he can’t get up but he doesn’t want to call for help. Or maybe he _can’t_.

I race through the house, checking every room – the Capitol room, laundry room, living room, bathrooms, the spare bedroom, his art room, even my own rooms – without success. I push open his bedroom door last of all, convinced that he must have snuck out on his skis and fallen in the woods – and there he is, fully dressed beneath the creamy furs and sound asleep, his face nestled into the center of a sunset-orange pillow.

I’ve never seen Peeta sleep, except for during the Games. _He’s sick,_ I realize in horror. _He must be._

I climb onto the bed at once and kneel beside him, feeling his forehead, then ease a hand inside his collar to touch his back, then his chest. His skin is warm and flushed with sleep; neither hot nor clammy, and his throat isn’t swollen.

 _Could he have eaten something bad?_ I wonder frantically. _Or hit his head?_ I run my fingertips carefully through his curls, seeking lumps on his scalp. Mom deals with plenty of head injuries in miners, and sometimes letting the patient sleep is the worst thing you can do, though I don’t remember why. I know she checks their pupils for something, though, so I carefully ease open Peeta’s left eye with my thumb and forefinger, certain I’ll know what’s wrong when I see it.

“Katniss…?” he slurs, blinking to free his eyelids from my fingers, then, “Katniss!” he cries, much clearer, sitting bolt upright in bed. “What’s wrong?” he asks, taking my face in his hands and gently turning it this way and that, as though seeking for a wound or signs of illness. “Are you all right?”

 _Am_ I _all right?_ I want to shriek in both fury and relief at this boy who is clearly, entirely _fine_ , but I bite my tongue and soften my tone. “You weren’t there,” I say, pretending I don’t hear the almost childish dismay in my voice. “I came in from hunting and…you’re never not there,” I finish, far more feebly than demanding.

“I was napping,” he says, flushing a little as his hands slip from my face. “I do that sometimes, mid-morning or after lunch, since I’m up so early. I left you a note,” he says hopefully, but his face falls at something in my eyes. “You didn’t see it,” he realizes, and rubs his face with a groan. “I knew it was a bad idea,” he says. “Katniss, I am _so_ sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. I thought for sure I’d be up before you came in, but I made your lunch and left a note on the table just in case you got back early.”

He walks me downstairs, his cheeks pink and creased with pillow-lines on one side, and I see what I looked straight past in my panic. On top of my covered soup bowl is a small piece of paper with a pretty chain of katniss flowers sketched down the left side. _Katniss,_ it reads:

_Taking a short nap to catch up from these baker’s hours. Let me know if not okay. More soup on the stove. Mint tea in the pot. Bread keeping warm in the oven._

_Made your cookies with dark chocolate this time. Hope okay._

_Be up soon, but wake me if you need._

_Peeta_

Once again, I’m torn between relief and fury, only this time it’s directed at myself. Peeta made it clear to me where he was; I just wasn’t paying attention. More to the point: he’s not beholden to me in any way. He doesn’t have to be in the kitchen every time I come in for a meal just because I’ve grown accustomed to it.

“Hey,” he says softly, his fingertips brushing the cuff of my sleeve. “You were worried about me?”

“No,” I lie, scowling, but it’s a futile effort, and I don’t resist the arm that pulls me to his side.

“I’d have been beside myself if it were me, you know,” he confesses, resting his cheek against my forehead. “It’s bad enough when you’re outside for hours on end. If one day I couldn’t find you, I think I’d run screaming through the woods till I did and frighten away every rabbit and deer for miles.”

I laugh shakily at the thought, picturing heavy-footed Peeta stomping through snowdrifts, red-faced and shouting my name. He’s depicting it in a humorous fashion, but like my fears for him, there’s nothing truly funny about it. I bite back a choked little sound and turn toward him fully, slipping my arms around his waist and pressing my face into the curve of his neck.

His arms close around me as natural as breath, cradling me to him. “Hey,” he says again, stroking the tail of my braid where it lies between my shoulder blades. “It’s okay. We’re both okay, and…I won’t take any more naps.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I grumble against his shoulder, making him chuckle. “You’re a baker; that’s how it works. I wondered how you always managed to be up so early and still go to bed after me.”

“Up till now, it’s been a combination of sheer enthusiasm and keeping myself really busy,” he tells me, and I hear a smile in his voice. “I can’t say the naps wouldn’t help, but –”

“Then _take them_ , silly boy,” I say, leaning back a little to meet his eyes. “I can easily feed myself, and I’ll know where you are now, so I won’t worry.”

But it’s not worry I feel when I come in the next day to a covered lunch and another note: it’s _loneliness._ I’m adrift without Peeta; it doesn’t feel right to be moving about the house without him. To eat his fine food without him sitting across from me. To be awake when he’s asleep.

Considerate as he is, Peeta makes every effort to coordinate his naps with my activities. If I’m hunting, he knows I’ll be gone for a longer period of time, so he’ll try to catch a couple hours of sleep then. If I’m skating or tanning rabbit skins, he’ll aim for a short cat-nap on the sofa, so he hears me when I come in – or he might simply not nap at all those days. Regardless, I come back to a silent house and a sleeping Peeta about a third of the time.

It’s overwhelming and a little frightening, how badly I want to just _be_ with him and how purposeless I feel when he’s asleep. Part of me wants to go up to his bedroom with my meal and sit beside him till he wakes. Another, deeply unsettling part of me wants to crawl beneath the covers and curl my arms around him; to press my face against the nape of his neck and share his warmth and his slumber.

It would be one thing if I were busier, but Peeta hasn’t allotted – or allowed – me chores of any kind, aside from hunting, cleaning game, and tanning hides, so when I come in, I have very little to do. Eat the meal that he prepared. Work on a letter to Prim. Put my boots back on and go pester Pollux. Peeta doesn’t sleep more than an hour or two at a time, so I don’t want to do anything that takes me away for long or can’t be easily interrupted, like skating or snowshoeing in the woods.

Oddly enough, it’s Lavinia who presents a solution. After two days of watching me drift around the house, waiting for Peeta to wake, she takes my hand and leads me up to her attic, where a basketful of colorful skeins of yarn waits on her kitchen table.

Apparently this silent, beautiful woman can _knit_.

That afternoon I simply watch, fascinated, as a bright blue stocking cap takes shape between her needles. The next day she tries to teach me, but it’s clear that my hands aren’t cut out for such patient, elegant work. It gives me an idea, though – or rather, revives an idea that’s been at the back of my mind since the night I chose to stay here. There are just two weeks till New Year’s, and I’ve already amassed an impressive heap of perfect rabbit pelts. It may well be beyond my abilities, but I want to make Peeta a fur muffler as a present.

New Year’s is one of our few remaining holidays in Panem. I don’t know what the legends are in other districts, but in Twelve our oldest and bravest tell a sort of folk spin on the Victory Tour. For the last twelve days of each year, a fairytale figure called Father Christmas – a merry, bearded man, dressed all in furs – drives a sleigh, drawn by snow-white ponies, across the country, visiting one district each night and leaving little gifts on the residents’ doorsteps. Twelve is his last stop, made on New Year’s Eve, and according to legend, he leaves a shoeful of coal – our most precious commodity – and a stockingful of sweets for every child in the district.

Of course, Father Christmas is nothing but a myth; a whisper of memory from times of peace and plenty, long before the Dark Days, but it amuses folk to recount the old tales in the cruel dead of winter, and Merchant families even playact the legend to a certain extent. Merchant children leave a shoe and stocking on their doorstep on New Year’s Eve, and in the night their parents fill the stocking with sweets and put a piece of coal in the shoe. Then on New Year’s Day the children wake in delight and run outside to see what “Father Christmas” has left them.

Seam kids know the tales too, maybe better than Merchant children, and they put out a shoe and stocking up till the age of five or six. They’re young and hopeful then, even the poorest ones, but their parents are lucky to have food to put on the table and can’t afford coal and sweets to begin with, let alone as an extra treat on a special occasion. After a few years of waking to a flat stocking and an empty shoe, both hollow and stiff with cold, they give up the tradition, though on the very bitterest New Year’s Eves, the coldest and hungriest of Seam folk – young and old – still leave out a shoe and stocking, just in case.

Prim and I never got coal in our shoes, but Dad left us something even better: small, fragrant blocks of pine that we could throw on the fire the next morning to make the house smell wonderful, and he always came up with little treats for our stockings too. Humble things that he collected on his hunting trips or made himself from foraged or scavenged materials, but we loved them more than any store-bought toy or sweet. Pinecones and acorns and pretty pebbles, the most perfect ones he could find; little stick-dolls dressed in scraps of cloth with smiling seed-pod faces; old socks made into whimsical hand-puppets, with black button eyes and colorful patches to cover the holes at toe and heel; even bits of crystallized honeycomb, as good as anything from the sweet-shop.

My father loved the old New Year’s lore and traditions. He knew all kinds of tales and told us a few every year, and he did his best to give us as much “holiday” as his meager wages and the supplemental income from his hunting and foraging could afford. Most of the time this meant a stout peppermint stick from the sweet-shop, broken in half for Prim and me to share, and enough flour and sugar for Mom to make a little New Year’s cake, but one _very_ good year, after Mom had gone to put Prim to bed, Dad went to his hunting jacket and took out a perfect orange, as costly as two pounds of good flour and as bright as a miniature sun in our firelit living room. _Happy New Year, catkin,_ he whispered, pressing the round, radiant fruit into my hands. I had never held an orange before, let alone tasted one. I burst into tears and hugged him as hard as I could.

We sat up well past midnight, the pair of us in Granny Ashpet’s creaky rocking chair, drawn up close beside the fire, peeling the orange with utmost care and reverently eating the juicy sections. Dad wanted me to have the whole thing, but I wouldn’t hear of it and made sure he ate exactly half of the orange himself – and we saved the peel for Mom. She dried it and grated bits into our tea and bread for weeks afterward. I was ten that New Year’s, but I fell asleep on my father’s lap like a contented toddler, my forehead nestled against the pleasant scruff of his midwinter beard and my sticky fingers knotting in the dusty green wool of his juniper sweater as he sang me a lullaby, each word sweet with orange against my cheek.

Gift-giving at New Year’s – a further expansion on the Father Christmas myth – is common in Twelve. Even some better-off Seam families exchange little presents, usually handmade or secondhand. All the shops in town stay open late on New Year’s Eve, in part so the Merchants themselves can go out and purchase gifts for each other, but also so that places that deal in perishables, like the bakery and sweet-shop, can sell all their stock before the holiday. The Hob does a fair bit of business on New Year’s Eve too, as you might expect, as Seam folk with a few extra coins try to make them stretch as far as possible to give their families a bit of a treat at holiday-time. More than once I’ve seen a hungry miner pass up a much-needed bowl of Greasy’s Sae’s stew to buy a handful of cheap, crumpled ribbons for his daughters or a faded length of calico for his wife.

On New Year’s Day, the shops are closed and the Hob is deserted. Even the miners get a rare holiday – without pay, of course. If the Harvest Festival is about the district as a community, with dancing and music and public feasts, New Year’s is about family and loved ones – and at such a brutally cold time of year, most people are only too happy to stay at home and sit around the fire, singing festive old songs to keep warm. President Snow makes a speech at 10:00 in the morning, which they broadcast in the square, but it’s not compulsory viewing and even _he_ doesn’t seem that excited about it. The only people who see it, I imagine, are the Merchants hurrying across the square, pies and beribboned parcels in hand, to spend the holiday with their relatives or sweethearts.

I have no sweetheart, and I won’t be with my family for New Year’s either. I’ll be with Peeta, who, kind as he is, must be accustomed to receiving New Year’s presents, and I don’t want to disappoint him; not when we have _decades_ of New Years ahead of us. I can’t begin to guess what he wants, and there’s little enough that he _needs_ , but I suspect a fur muffler just might fit the bill. I got the idea for it the day we went skiing and I had to wrap him up in one of my father’s old scarves because he didn’t have an extra of his own. He usually turns up the collar of his bearskin against the cold, but there are no fastenings to keep it closed, so he has to hold the edges together with one hand. A muffler would serve perfectly, enclosing his neck, mouth, and nose in an unbroken loop of dense winter fur.

I start on it the very next day during Peeta’s nap. I stuff my foraging bag with rabbit skins from the workshop and smuggle them up to my hobby room, then seek out Lavinia to borrow scissors, needle, and thread. This confuses her at first – she thinks I need something repaired, and I’m reluctant to reveal what I’m working on – but she finally surrenders a needle, a sharp pair of shears, and a spool of strong brown thread. I hurry these down to my room, only to stare at the pile of furs on my desk, paralyzed by inexperience and uncertainty. I’ve hemmed trousers and skirts, tacked on stray buttons and mended little holes and tears, but I’m no degree of a seamstress, let alone one who can sew _fur_ and make it into something not only functional but pleasant to look at.

I lay out the furs like puzzle pieces – I worked too hard, fleshing and tanning every inch of them, to carelessly lop off bits to make them fit together easier – in a large loop, double-sided, that Peeta will be able to wrap around his neck twice, but my first needle-strokes are overly vigorous and pierce the pads of my fingers, making me hiss with pain. A moment later, to my astonishment, a pair of hands reaches around me and gently takes away the two furs I was attempting to splice together, and I look up into Lavinia’s sympathetic face. I can’t imagine how she came in without me hearing, but I’m relieved beyond words that it was her and not Peeta. She gestures at the furs laid out on the desk, raising her dark brows in question, and I nod vigorously. “Yes, please,” I tell her. “Help would be great.”

I worry a little that she’ll simply take over the project and finish it herself, but she only provides me with a thimble, a few demonstrative gestures, and her silent, patient company. She brings a chair and her knitting and settles beside the fireplace, not unlike a kitchen cat, while I stitch and snip and curse quietly for days on end. Once the pelts comprising both sides of the muffler are securely spliced and ready to be sewn together, she invites me up to her attic to continue my work on her sofa, with a pot of cinnamon tea – far more palatable than Pollux’s bitter coffee – for us to share.

Now and again Lavinia hums as she works, which startles me out of my skin at first and sends her into a fit of throaty giggles. I’ve grown so accustomed to her silence, her pantomimes and chalk messages, that I’d forgotten she still has vocal chords – still has a _voice_ , really. She can laugh and sigh and groan and hum; lush, lilting melodies, as sweet and soothing as any of my mother’s lullabies – she simply can’t articulate words. I wonder for the first time whether retaining a wordless voice after losing one’s tongue is more a blessing or a curse.

“You have a beautiful voice,” I tell her shyly, half afraid I might offend. “Did you sing…before?”

She gives a noncommittal shrug, but the look in her eyes is heartbreaking. I wonder if this stunning girl was admired for her voice, like my father. If, like him, she sang to her sweetheart – the doomed boy who ran away from the Capitol with her – and whiled away the long hours of their trek across Panem with songs. If she meant to sing to her children one day, in their home in the wilderness bordering Twelve.

Not for the first time, I wonder if they would have been caught if Peeta had won an earlier Games and made his home in the woods a few years previous.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

She touches her mouth with her fingertips, a gesture I’ve learned means _Thank you_ , and turns back to her knitting. After a little she starts humming again, and this time I join in. I don’t know the tune, but I make up a quiet harmony beneath it, like I used to do with Dad. Lavinia glances up from her needles and smiles when she catches my eye, and I smile back. It’s the closest we’ve come to a conversation so far.

That night, and almost every night after, she hums as she brushes my hair before bed, and I hum along in harmony until I pick up her tune. Slowly, quietly, we teach each other new songs and recite them together as needles keep our hands busy.

I have the very good fortune to find a small flock of late, lost geese wandering the frozen lakeshore and shoot two for their rich dark meat – which Peeta is delighted to roast for us – and, more importantly for my purposes, their dense, precious down. I want to fill Peeta’s muffler with goose down for an extra layer of warmth, and in light of my success with that garment, I’ve decided to attempt a second New Year’s project in the time remaining: a rabbit-fur pillow, stuffed with down, for my night visitor.

If Peeta notices that I’m bringing home an excessive number of rabbits, he doesn’t remark on it and continues to surprise me with a delectable, seemingly endless variety of roasts and stews and other savory main dishes with an abundance of meat in every bite. “It’ll be New Year’s soon,” he reminds me – needlessly – over one such supper. “What would you like to send to your family?”

Prim and I exchange letters about every five days – I suspect Pollux and Lavinia's trips to town are planned around our correspondence – as well as baked sweets from our respective Mellarks. In the few weeks that have passed since I left home, I can tell she’s already grown stronger, healthier, and happier. Her letters are more focused – the result of a plentiful, nutritious diet – and her handwriting is neat and steady. Prim has always been smart as a whip, but even _that_ has improved with their new standard of living. She tells me that she has the top marks in all of her subjects now, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least.

She writes that Mom went straight to work in the apothecary shop, taking to her old tasks like a duck to water. She took stock of what they had to work with the very first day and promptly sent Gale to the woods for pine needles, which she made into syrup and lozenges for colds, miner’s cough, and the like. According to Prim, they’ve sold “gobs” of both already, to both Seam and Merchant folk. The family who runs the sweet-shop even ordered two bottles of pine needle syrup to use in special New Year’s treats, and Prim expects they’ll order much more as Mom prepares and stocks other syrups and extracts. _They used to trade all the time,_ she writes, _the apothecary and sweet-shop and bakery. They’re all right next door to each other, and the apothecary used to supply a lot of flavorings that the other shops needed._

My sister is clearly delighted with her new neighbors, from the delicious smells that wake her every morning to the hot fresh bread, rolls, and sticky buns that Mr. Mellark or Marko makes sure to deliver well before she has to leave for school. They drop by with other things too, now and again – eggs, butter, meat, apples, and such – just to make sure that Mom and Prim always have plenty, and sometimes they linger for a cup of tea and a cookie – which, of course, they baked and brought over themselves. This surprised Prim at first – after Dad died, there were never men in our house unless they were sick or injured miners, and none of them ever came back for tea – but now she looks forward to those visits. She tells me, laughing – I can hear it in her words – that since the heavy snowfall shortly after I moved out here, all of the Mellark men have let their beards grow; even Luka, who’s just seventeen and, in Prim’s words, “can barely manage the sort of downy fuzz that you find on a piglet.” _Mom’s teaching me how to make soap,_ she writes, _the fine stuff, with lavender, honey, and cream. I’ve got bars of shaving soap curing for all three of them for New Year’s._

Prim insists that I don’t need to give her anything for New Year’s, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have a clue of what to offer, even if I had money to spend and access to shops. For the past three years, she’s been the only person I gave any sort of New Year’s gift to: a peppermint stick, all to herself; a rag-dolly, cut from the prettiest of our worn-out clothes; a colorful hair ribbon. But she’s outgrown such gifts, seemingly overnight, and now that she lives in a cozy Merchant home over a very promising shop, with all her needs taken care of and extra spending money besides, she already _has_ , or can clearly afford, anything I can think to give her.

“We can send whatever you want,” Peeta assures me, “but bear in mind: they live next door to my family now, so they’ll be up to their eyes in bread and cookies and the best pies you’ve ever tasted.”

He grins at that, and I can’t resist returning the expression. Prim gushes about Marko’s pies in every letter, especially his famous golden crusts that melt in your mouth. He’s taken to baking her miniature pies in little jam jars, both savory and sweet recipes, and dropping them off in the morning for her school lunch. She washes the jars when she gets home and returns them to the bakery, filled with sugar or milk as a thank-you, and he always brings them back the next morning – or sends them over with his father – with two new little pies baked inside. It’s more indulgence than Prim needs, probably, but I’m glad of it. Without me around, she’ll have needed someone to fill that older sibling role, to look out for her while keeping her spirits up, and Peeta’s oldest brother seems to be doing an exceptional job at both. Then again: as naturally endearing as Prim is, I shouldn’t be surprised to find her new neighbors going out of their way to indulge her at every opportunity.

“Snow ice cream,” I decide. I don’t know how well it will travel or keep, but it’s something I know they can’t make in town, owing to the coal-polluted snow, and the one thing I’m most eager for Prim to try. “And maybe ginger cake,” I add, blushing a little.

Peeta serves warm ginger cake and custard every Sunday night, and just like we did the second night I was here, we eat from the same plate, our spoons taking increasingly greedy scoops of custard-drenched cake till they meet in the middle and Peeta concedes the final bite to me. I always mean to offer it to him in turn, but so far I haven’t managed it. His ginger cake is just too good: it’s impossible to pass up a crumb, let alone a bite.

“Of course,” he replies, blushing slightly himself, and I wonder if he’s also thinking of those Sunday nights at the dinner table. “I’ll make shortbread too. If there’s anything you’d like to get for them from the shops, just let me or Lavinia know and she can pick it up the next time she goes to town.”

Lavinia goes to town two days later, and I cut my hunting trip short to spend more time hidden away in my hobby room, piecing together the rabbit skins to make my companion’s pillow. I don’t know if said companion _is_ Lavinia, but I’d like to keep the pillow a surprise just in case, in part because I want to hear their reaction on New Year’s night but also because I’m a little afraid of how she might respond to me making a gift for the stranger who shares my bed. So far she seems pleased by the things I’ve done, the little comforts I provide, but this is a much bigger gesture. This is _hours_ of work; of blood and oily brain tissue caked under my nails, of washing and scraping and stretching dozens of little pelts, of burning eyes and pricked fingers and tears of frustration. I’m taking just as much care with my companion’s pillow as I did with Peeta’s muffler. I’m not sure what that means, and I certainly don’t want to try to explain it.

Lavinia returns late that afternoon with a mysterious parcel that’s as long as she is tall and a large order from the grocer’s, including a bushel basket full of plump red cranberries. Peeta grins with sheer delight as he carries the basket into the kitchen and places it with aplomb on the table.

“What on earth do you need a _bushel_ of cranberries for?” I ask, even as I cup a handful of the brilliant little fruits in awe.

“ _So_ many things,” he replies, with a merry laugh. “I’m going to start simmering the wine and cider tomorrow, then there are breads and sauces and, if you and Lavinia are willing, maybe even a little something for the birds to enjoy for New Year’s.”

New Year’s is less than a week away now, though I’m still astonished that he’s planning to start the spiced wine already. It’ll be simmering for _days_. “If we’re willing…?” I puzzle. After all, Lavinia and I are both his servants, however well he takes care of us, and I’m long overdue to be assigned my tasks.

“It’s something fun, I think,” he says with a wink. “And of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

He adds three generous handfuls of cranberries, their skins carefully pierced, to the roasting pan with the wild goose that will serve as our supper, and I retreat to my hobby room for a few extra minutes to stitch and frown and think. I’ve been here almost a month now, and while those weeks have been impossibly pleasant – beyond my wildest dreams, truth be told – the absence of any sort of real work has begun to gnaw at me. I hunt, of course, but that’s little more than a few hours’ labor every other day, even with the plucking and tanning, and all of this sewing is for _gifts_ , not because Peeta asked me to do it.

Peeta hasn’t asked me to do _any_ sort of work thus far, except for hunting, and now he’s talking about this New Year’s project as though I can simply say no and go back to doing…well, _nothing_. Writing letters to my sister. Playing in the snow. Sewing with Lavinia. Enjoyable things all, but they’re no way to repay the boy who’s keeping me in furs and chocolate and fresh bread – and my family in so much luxury of their own that I can’t think of a single thing to give them for New Year’s.

I’m already cross from snags in my thread and misaligned pelts, and these thoughts only add fuel to my ire. I come down to dinner feeling impatient and irritable, and even roast goose with cranberries and golden-skinned potatoes mashed with butter and cream can’t improve my mood. It’s yet another reminder of the staggering luxury that I haven’t earned and don’t deserve.

Peeta notices straightaway that something is wrong but he doesn’t press me to tell him, which somehow only makes it worse. He fills my plate with the very best cuts of goose, a heavy dollop of potatoes, and a hearty slice of bread – this morning’s project, made with oats, clover honey, and chunks of milk chocolate – then he sits back in his chair and studies me with worried eyes. “You’re working too hard,” he says at last, frowning. “Is it the hunting, Katniss? How can I help?”

Suddenly, even his gentle concern irks me – because I _haven’t_ been working hard, not really. The shadows under my eyes are from stolen hours of fireside sewing, in which I’m making New Year’s presents for him and my night companion – in my _leisure time_. I’m not working _at all_ , save for bringing home fresh meat every other day.

“You can tell me what I’m supposed to be _doing_ ,” I retort, tossing the bread back onto my plate untouched. “I’ve been here almost a month, and the only thing you’ve asked me to do is hunt.”

Peeta’s brows fly up in surprise. I haven’t spoken to him like this since the night I first came here, and even though I know I’m being rude, I can’t help it. This lopsided bargain has gone on long enough, and it’s time and past I started earning my keep, whatever that requires.

“That’s all you _need_ to do for me,” he says, puzzled. “It’s _more_ than enough. Though – if you don’t want to –”

“Stop it!” I snap, pushing my chair back. My face is hot and prickling with true anger now. “Stop this ‘if you don’t want to’ nonsense and just _tell me_ what you want from me!”

Peeta blinks rapidly, stung by my words, and I feel like the snake in this sad old tale my father used to tell. On a cold and rainy day, an elderly man carried a small poisonous snake up a mountain because it promised not to bite him. When they got to the top, the snake bit the man anyway. _Did you forget I was a snake?_ it asked the dying man as he lamented the betrayal.

“I want you to be happy, Katniss,” he says softly. “I want to make the shadows under your eyes disappear. I want you to have every comfort you could ever dream of. I want you to smile and laugh and –” His voice breaks. “I want you to _sing_ ,” he whispers.

“Sing,” I echo dumbly, my mind catching at the most tangible of his strange demands. “Now?”

He shakes his head, and his eyes are so sad that my heart burns. “Only if you want,” he says.

“Stop it, Peeta!” I snarl, getting up from my chair and jarring the table with an angry clatter. “Stop being so…so damn _nice_ and easy-going about this! If you want something, _tell me!_ I’ll do whatever you want; I’ve said so from the beginning. I’m here for your pleasure.”

He stares at me for a long moment, his wide eyes hurt and horrified, and I realize he’s hearing everything I haven’t said but have been thinking all this time.

 _He saved my life five years ago. He’s saving it again,_ and _the lives of my family. I’ll do whatever he wants._

_I said I’d do whatever he wants. And, of course, I will. Poorly, but I will – because I owe him._

_I have nothing else to give him._

It’s like he can see every moment when I laid in that beautiful forest bed, trembling or weeping or rigid with fear, waiting to offer him my body in exchange for his kindness. I haven’t intended that in weeks now, but if he asked – if he wanted – I’d still oblige, no matter how uncertain and terrified I would be, simply because I owe him so much.

And now this boy, the gentlest, most generous person on this earth, knows it. Knows I would do anything to repay him for his gifts, even surrender my body for his pleasure.

A tear winks on his long pale lashes, and shame and bile push up my throat, choking me. _Did you forget I was a snake?_ sobs a voice in my chest. _You fed me and cared for me and held me so close, but I bit you anyway._

“No, Katniss,” he says very quietly, getting to his feet. He sets his napkin alongside his plate; a strange, deliberate gesture, as the tear slips from his lashes to wet his cheek. “It’s the other way around,” he whispers.

He walks out of the dining room without looking back and I hear his heavy tread on the stairs. I wonder if he’s going to get my things; the wretched, poor, ugly things I brought from home. I wonder if I should pack them myself and save him the trouble.

And suddenly I’m crumpled on the floor, grasping at the seat of my chair and gasping for breath with a pain in my chest that stabs deeper with every inhalation. If being with Peeta is the most wonderful feeling in the world, losing him is the _worst_ ; a hot, relentless pulse of pure agony. I feel like someone’s torn out my heart and lungs and left me gaping and bleeding and broken in this beautiful room that I never deserved to step inside, let alone eat in. Let alone meals that were prepared just for me and fed to me by a sweet, wounded boy who only wants me to be happy.

I rock against the polished wood and grind my burning eyes against my forearm. _What have I done?_ Good, gentle Peeta, the boy I sewed a muffler for from rabbit skins I tanned myself…how could I be so cruel? To suggest that I would rather be his whore than accept his kindness freely…he _should_ kick me out of his house. I should kick myself out.

I should go. I have to go. I never deserved this beautiful home, or Peeta’s kindness, and I’ve insulted both with my bitter words.

I struggle to my feet, my eyes and nose streaming, and stumble out to the mudroom. I step bare feet into my hunting boots and pull Dad’s jacket from its hook, but I didn’t switch on the light and can’t find my scarves in the darkness. I’m fumbling blindly in the niches, my fingers seeking thin, pilled wool, when a hand at my shoulder turns me about and I am enveloped in a cloud of soft fur, so heavy that I sink beneath its weight and fall against a broad chest.

I don’t need to see to know who holds me. Honey and cream and cloves, musk and warm wool and goose roasted with cranberries. I bury my face in the scents I never thought I’d breathe again and whimper with both grief and hope, grasping handfuls of the sweater beneath my fingers. “I’m sorry,” I gasp through my tears. “I’m so sorry. I should –”

“Shh,” Peeta murmurs against my brow, his strong hands on either side of me, cradling me to him with his precious bearskin. “Don’t leave me, Katniss. Please don’t go.”

“I can’t…” I choke, and he turns his face a little, nuzzling my temple with his cheek. I lean into the caress, like a lynx kit at the affectionate stroke of its mother’s tongue, and Peeta draws me closer still.

“Come sit with me for a little?” he asks. The words are like a welcome kiss, brushing the crown of my head, and I nod against his shoulder.

He guides me into the living room and seats me on the sofa with the bearskin still draped around me, and though I know I don’t deserve its comfort, tonight more than ever, I can’t bring myself to shrug it off. He sits close beside me and toys with the fur of the collar for a moment, where it lies against my shoulder.

“Katniss, I don’t know how I can make this any clearer to you,” he begins, his voice very soft, as though he’s speaking to a wounded animal. “The only thing I want – and I want it _badly_ , more than anything in the world – is for you to be happy. For you to have everything that you want.”

I look up to meet his eyes and find them solemn; even ardent. Peeta’s not just being nice or easy-going; somehow, impossible though it may be, this is truly what he wants. _My happiness._

“Why?” I whisper.

He gives a sad little laugh. The sound rubs against my heart like a burr. “Does it really matter?” he asks.

I consider that for a moment. After all, if I’m here to do whatever he wants, shouldn’t I accept those requests out of hand? If he gave me chores, I wouldn’t ask him why. I wouldn’t even have questioned it if he came to my bed to take pleasure in my body. Why does it bother me so much that all he wants is to be kind?

“People don’t help me,” I say. It’s an inarticulate explanation, but Peeta comprehends just the same.

“ _I_ did,” he reminds me with a small smile. The smile of an eleven-year-old boy who took a beating so he could save my life with burned bread. “And ever since that day, Katniss,” he says, “it’s _all_ that I’ve wanted. To feed you. To keep you warm and dry – and happy.”

I look at him; at this boy I’ve snapped and snarled at like a rabid dog and insulted with my Seam-born sense of debt and duty, and I believe him. I don’t _understand_ , and I doubt I ever will, but I believe him.

“It’s hard, Peeta,” I confess, staring down at my hands in my lap. “Hard to accept things I haven’t earned or traded for.”

His hand inches into my line of vision, covering both of my hands with its broad warmth. “Surely that depends on the giver,” he says.

I look up, confused, to find a strange, soft smile on his face. “What do you mean?” I ask.

“When your dad gave you little treats or wrapped you up in his coat or made you lunch in the woods,” he says, tracing the curve of my cheek with his free hand, “did you feel you owed him for that?”

“Of course not,” I answer, still perplexed. “He was my father; my family. He did those things because he cared. Because he wanted to take care of me; to make me smile. Because he loved me,” I whisper, caught up in distant, cherished memories that Peeta has managed to evoke in detail with just a few choice words.

“Maybe,” he says hoarsely. “Maybe he wasn’t the only one.”

His voice is raw and quiet but his eyes are fever-bright. “I don’t –” I begin, and then his hands are on my face, pulling me to him.

For a mad, foolish second I think he’s going to kiss me, but he only leans in to press his forehead to mine. Even so, we’re so close that the tips of our noses touch, and I can taste the cider on his slow, shallow breath. “Katniss,” he groans. “ _I_ care about you. I care _so_ much. I want to take care of you and make you smile. I –”

“ _Why?_ ” I whisper.

He makes a sound that might be a whimper and leans back a little so our foreheads no longer touch, though our noses still brush at the tips. “Because you left everything to come and live with me,” he breathes. “Because you came here expecting to work and got angry when others served you instead. Because you’re my huntress and my companion,” he whispers, his eyes dark and soft as his thumb brushes my cheek, “and everything in this house belongs to you.”

“Let me do something for you,” I plead.

He leans back even further at that, frowning deeply, and I hurry to reassure him, “Something ordinary – I want to. To wash the dishes after you cook, or make lunch when you’re napping or…just to _help_ you. Not because of owing but –”

 _Because I care about you,_ I realize. _Because I want to take care of you and make you smile._

I don’t understand these feelings at all, but I don’t know why I find them so surprising. From my reactions to his Games to the morning I wrapped him in Dad’s scarf to my panic the first day he disappeared for a nap, this boy has _mattered_ to me, but somehow, even as I cursed and scowled and pricked my fingers for nights on end, stitching him a muffler from my painstakingly tanned rabbit skins, I’ve never realized quite how _much_.

“Because…I want to take care of you too,” I say quietly.

He closes his eyes and sighs so deeply that I feel it in my bones. “Okay,” he murmurs at last, the corners of his mouth creeping up in a careful smile as he opens his eyes. “In that case…I think we should have supper. It’s probably cold now, but I don’t mind if you don’t.”

“I have an even better idea,” I tell him with a cautious smile of my own.

I go to the dining room and cut several slices of Peeta’s sweet chocolate-honey bread and put them in the oven to toast for a few minutes. While they’re crisping up, I fill a platter with cold goose and cranberries and potatoes, plus an entire little golden spice cake that I find on the kitchen counter, which Peeta clearly baked for our dessert. I cut the toasted bread into quarters and spread some with butter and the rest with creamy goat cheese, then carry the works into the living room.

“I’ll cook it myself next time,” I tell Peeta, feeling a little ridiculous for making a tray of the supper he prepared when we could just as soon have gone back to the dining room and eaten it all there.

He picks up a square of toasted bread spread with goat cheese and looks at me as though I’ve brought him the moon. “This is _perfect_ , Katniss,” he says.

Unsurprisingly, we make short work of everything. The roast goose tastes even better cold, or maybe it’s just my relief at the pain and conflict that have passed. We smile as we eat, offering each other bites and stealing others, and when every last crumb is gone, I take the dishes into the kitchen and run a sinkful of hot water. “You don’t –” Peeta begins from behind me.

"I want to," I say, looking back at him. "Please, Peeta."

He concedes the plates, mugs, and forks but insists on drying the dishes as I wash, and he ousts me from the sink before I can start on the kettles and pans. “That’s _my_ mess,” he insists, but gently. “I’ll finish up. Pick me out some bread ingredients for tomorrow,” he teases, “then go get some rest.”

I choose a jar of almonds, the much-used bottle of nutmeg, and a handful of vibrant cranberries from his bushel basket, now holding pride of place in the pantry. Peeta obediently doesn’t peek as I hide the ingredients under a clean dishtowel, but I hear him chuckle softly as he tries to guess what might be there by the sounds I made. As an afterthought, I slip a hand back under the towel and sneak out two cranberries, which I tuck carefully into a pocket of my trousers. There are more than enough beneath the towel for a delicious loaf of bread tomorrow, and I suspect my companion would enjoy cranberries as a bedtime treat.

“Katniss,” Peeta says quietly, without turning around, and my heart sinks. I know he won’t begrudge me two little cranberries, but I feel terrible for having taken them like a common thief.

My fingertips are already dipping into my pocket when he asks, “Why _are_ there shadows under your eyes?”

He turns to look at me then, drying his hands with the towel on the drainboard. “Is it bad dreams?” he asks, coming over to me. He takes my face in his dish-dampened hands and his brow creases in a worried frown. “Is your room uncomfortable? Are you having trouble sleeping?”

It’s little different than what he asked me in the dining room earlier, but this time his concern makes me smile. “It’s a New Year’s surprise,” I tell him, and ask in turn, “What’s your bird project for me and Lavinia?”

“I thought you might string a cranberry garland for the apple tree,” he says shyly. “I know it probably sounds silly, but we did it for a few years when I was really little, when Grandma Lydda was still alive, and our apple tree was full of happy birds for weeks afterward, even when all that was left was the strings.”

I chuckle inwardly at the thought of how well my recent sewing practice will serve me in this and wonder if shy, ground-feeding mourning doves might venture to eat from a berry garland strung around a tree. I wonder what other wonders a New Year’s celebration with Peeta Mellark holds for me.

“I’d love to,” I tell him, and bask in the sun-like radiance of his smile.

I hide the stolen cranberries until Lavinia leaves me for the night then reach boldly across the bed to lay them on my companion’s pillow. By firelight they glint against the buttery deerskin like rubies nestled in golden velvet.

In six nights there will be a pillow of heathered gray-brown rabbit fur in its place, stuffed with wild goose down and stitched together by my own hands. I wonder, not for the first time, whether I’ve taken leave of my senses by looking after my unseen bed partner in these strange, sentimental ways.

But their soft, happy sigh at finding cranberries on their pillow is all the reassurance I need.

* * *

I wake the next morning to an exquisite feeling of _relief_ ; a lightness so sweet and profound that I feel I could float downstairs to breakfast. I'm not foolish enough to think that last night's misunderstanding is the only one Peeta and I will ever face, but I hope beyond hope that it's the worst.

Peeta still doesn’t give me tasks or chores – I suspect it’s too ingrained, this need of his to tend and care and serve – but he no longer refuses my aid when I offer it. So for starters, I wash the breakfast dishes after we’ve eaten and come early to the kitchen at suppertime to see if I can help with the meal preparation in any way.

It feels better than I could have imagined to peel a potato or chop an onion. To have food beneath my hands; fresh and firm, not soft with rot or mold. Not apple peelings or eggshells or bones, the dregs of a Merchant’s feast that I struggle to stretch into a nourishing meal.

When I tell Peeta this, he drops the apple he’s slicing to come and take me in his arms, tucking me against him as though he can hide me from poverty and hunger with the strong bulk of his body. “I’m so sorry, Katniss,” he says. “I never thought – I didn’t realize cooking would be such a comfort to you, or I never would have kept you from it. You can cook and eat anything you want,” he tells me, holding me by the shoulders and looking into my eyes. “Everything in this house belongs to you. That means every potato and onion and apple in the pantry and every egg and cheese and bottle of cream in the icebox.”

I laugh lightly, though the words mean more to me than he can possibly imagine. “You’re a much better cook than me,” I remind him. “I’m more than happy to eat whatever you make.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he teases.

“It just…feels _good_ to do this sometimes,” I explain. “To know there’s food – good, fresh food – for our table, and to see and feel and smell as it goes into a meal.”

Peeta clearly takes my words to heart, because the next morning when I come in, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed from a bracing skate on the lake, he calls me into the kitchen and eagerly beckons me over to the table. The flour-dusted surface is spread with two kinds of dough, one deep brown and the other creamy gold, both rolled out smooth and uniform. To either side of the dough are tarnished copper shapes, clearly identifiable as pine trees, snowflakes, birds, deer, and rabbits.

“Grandma Lydda’s cookie cutters,” he tells me happily. “Dad sent them back with Lavinia the other day. Would you like to help me?”

Real cookies were almost as rare in my family’s home as oranges, and I agree without hesitation. Peeta shyly offers me an apron – a simple panel of wildflower-patterned calico with a double-pocket in front – and we spend an exquisite hour pressing out whimsically shaped cookies and drinking enormous mugs of hot chocolate with stolen pinches of dough while our lunch of chicken dumpling soup simmers deliciously on the stove alongside massive kettles of cider and Grandma Lydda’s spiced wine.

We eat our soup and bread at the kitchen table, eyes riveted on the oven door, impatient for the first pan to be done. When it comes out at last, a seeming _eternity_ later, Peeta snatches up a golden pine tree that I pressed out myself and sets it, piping hot, on my plate. I break it in half and hand him the larger piece, and he pours me another cup of hot chocolate – for dunking, I discover – with a bashful smile.

The pale dough yields sugar cookies, thin and crisp and sweet; the perfect canvas for the little pots of richly hued frosting that Peeta retrieves from the pantry as we wait for the cookies to cool thoroughly. He paints each cookie like a tiny masterpiece: a brown beak here, a black eye there, a white tuft of frosting for a tail and a garland of cranberry-red dots stretching across a green-boughed pine tree.

The only thing missing is a knot of curly-haired children, squealing with delight as each cookie comes to life beneath their father’s skillful hands.

The dark cookies are gingerbread, and Peeta mixes a batch of silky white icing to paint impossibly lifelike patterns on the russet-brown snowflakes and rabbits and trees that smell mouthwateringly of molasses and ginger. “Who are these all _for_?” I ask, in awe at the beauty of his handiwork. Surely he means to send these cookies back to town with Pollux before the holiday. The bakery could make a small fortune from just one tray of Peeta’s intricately iced gingerbread snowflakes.

“For _you_ , of course,” he laughs, handing me a gingerbread rabbit that is almost too pretty to eat. “Have all you want. It’s four days to New Year’s, Katniss,” he reminds me with a wink. “You don’t think this is all the baking I plan to do?”

The next morning sees the worktop filled from edge to edge with even _more_ cookies: more sugar cookies and gingerbread; crosshatched peanut butter cookies, peppered with chunks of chocolate; enough bricks of shortbread to build a hut for Lady; and something Peeta simply calls “butter cookies,” so rich with butter and vanilla extract that a good whiff makes me feel half-drunk. Peeta pipes the batter artfully from what he calls a pastry bag, shaping perfect pine trees and little snowmen that would be too adorable to eat if they didn’t melt so deliciously on my tongue. I didn’t think _anything_ could best Mellarks’ famous golden shortbread, but I can barely keep my hands off the butter cookies when they come out of the oven, and Peeta has no interest in stopping me.

“I thought you’d like them,” he laughs. “They’re kind of impossibly good. It’s one of a few things I remember really well from when Grandma Lydda was alive: her incredible butter cookies. She used to make one shaped like a kissing bough, with little ribbons of icing, for boys to give their sweethearts.”

My cheeks grow hot and I hide my face behind a mugful of cold milk. Kissing boughs are one of a few New Year’s traditions that Twelve has maintained since before the Dark Days, and I’ve learned to avoid them like venomous snakes.

A kissing bough is simply a piece of wood wrapped in red and white ribbons and hung in a doorway. Wood is costlier than coal in Twelve, but it can be had for the foraging, and after a windy autumn, you can even find decent-sized branches in the Meadow. Merchant families usually get hold of substantial pieces of firewood or even small evergreen boughs, whereas Seam families are lucky to have a stout twig to serve, wrapped in red and white rags, as even the cheapest ribbons are beyond their means. Dad always made sure we had a handsome pine branch from the woods for our kissing bough, and we had proper satin ribbons – one red and two white – that Mom carefully wrapped up and tucked away after the holiday so we could reuse them year after year.

Of course, the whole point of a kissing bough is _kissing_ , and the rules are simple. If you pass under a kissing bough, however unaware, you owe a “forfeit” of a kiss to someone on the other side, and some Merchant boys and girls resort to devious tactics, such as hanging a kissing bough above the end of their counter, to claim kisses from unwitting customers or perhaps an ignorant sweetheart. Sometimes they hang a second kissing bough at their back door – I’m vigilant for those, since most of my trades are done at back doors – and laugh when their disgruntled parents catch them kissing their sweethearts on the back step of the shop. It’s said to be bad luck to interrupt such a kiss, so all the parents can do is scoff and shake their heads and wait for the lovebirds to finish.

Every household in the district hangs a kissing bough of some sort, even if it’s only a stick tied with colorful rags, and in one’s own home, the kissing is more of a playful thing. There was no shortage of females in our house who wanted to kiss my father, and Prim and I used to lie in wait to see which of us could catch him first when he came through the door and hop up on tiptoe to peck his bearded cheek with a happy kiss. Dad was never home when we got back from school, but Mom dutifully kissed us both as we walked through the door, her eyes bright and merry with mischief.

The kissing bough hangs for the twelve days preceding New Year’s, during which time kisses can be claimed at any moment. On New Year’s Day, as part of the festivities – in very poor homes, it might be the _only_ festivities – the kissing bough is taken down with great aplomb and the ribbons distributed. Red for sweethearts, white for friends, and always exchanged with a kiss.

Merchant boys typically give their white ribbons to their mothers or sisters and the red to their girls, who proudly wear them woven into their braids the next day at school. In a family with no sons, the daughters tie their red ribbons around a sweet or other small gift to present to their boys, who later sport the ribbons tied around their coat sleeves.

Once all the ribbons are gone, the kisses are used up. The father or oldest son puts the kissing bough on the fire – for many Seam families, that’s the only firewood they’ll see all year – and that marks the end of New Year’s.

It’s said to be bad luck to refuse a New Year’s kiss, giving or getting one. Dad always said Grandpa Asa would never have gotten a kiss off Granny Ashpet if it hadn’t been for New Year’s – and a mass of coins saved for one perfect red ribbon. It’s a silly old wives’ tale, but someone always has a story about a spinster sister who refused a kiss and never got another offer, and it’s not so far-fetched, really. If a boy cares enough to leave his home on New Year’s Day to find you and give you a ribbon that cost him or his father a pretty penny, and you refuse him a simple kiss in return, it’s likely he won’t ask again.

I’ve never received a ribbon of any color, except from my father, and I don’t expect to.

Most Seam families, like mine, reuse the same ribbons every year, so the ribbon distribution is just a symbolic thing. A special treat to savor for a precious hour or two. At the end of our New Year’s celebration, Dad untied the white ribbons and gave one each to Prim and me, tying it round a pigtail as he pressed sound kisses to our cheeks, then he untied the red one and gave it to Mom. Sometimes he looped it round the crown of her head, like a wreath of bright berries, or twined it between her slender fingers as he leaned in to kiss her; a tender, lingering sweethearts’ kiss that seemed to last forever. Red satin was striking against Mom’s white skin and pale hair, even when it was just a crumpled old ribbon that had been used for countless New Years already.

I wonder how many shiny new red ribbons bedecked her hair when she was Peeta’s father’s girl. How many lingering sweethearts’ kisses were exchanged at the back doors of the apothecary and bakery.

A few weeks ago Pollux took a sleigh-load of beautiful evergreen branches to town to serve as kissing boughs for Peeta’s family and my own. My family hasn’t hung a kissing bough – or celebrated New Year’s at all, really – since Dad died, but I think it’s expected of a Merchant household, especially one with a handsome shopfront and money for new satin ribbons. There are no boys in my family to claim those ribbons, and neither Mom nor Prim has a sweetheart. I wonder if their ribbons will be wrapped up and tucked away in a drawer to be reused again and again.

According to Prim’s letters, Mom hung one kissing bough in their living room and another in the center of the shop; out of tradition, of course, rather than an interest in festivity or flirtation. My mother is hardly in search of kisses for herself, and Prim is far too young for them. Still, I wonder who will tie the first red ribbon around my sister’s blonde plait and claim a kiss in return.

“Kissing bough _cookies_?” I ask Peeta dryly.

He blushes a little. “For the _very_ reluctant sweetheart,” he replies. “If you can’t get them to step under your kissing bough, you bring one _to_ them.”

I wonder if he ever tried that with his girl and curse myself as the words leave my lips. “Sounds like a good method for you,” I say. “You could go to town on New Year’s Day and give your girl a kissing bough cookie, wrapped in a red ribbon. At the very least, you’d get a kiss out of it.”

He turns red as a Merchant’s sweetheart ribbon and shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says with a crooked smile. “Somehow I doubt the threat of being unmarried forever would convince my sweetheart to kiss me.”

Something about Peeta saying _my sweetheart_ makes my chest tighten and ache. He’s never referred to his girl that way before, and it makes her more _real_ , somehow. His love for her is evident in every inch of this house, in every scent and texture and meal he prepares, but with no one here to receive that tenderness but me, Pollux, Lavinia, and a few wild animals, it’s easy to forget that there _is_ a girl. A girl for whom he won the Hunger Games.

 _I’ve loved her for as long as I can remember,_ he told Caesar, _but I don’t think she even knew I was alive until the Reaping. She’s beautiful, and a lot of boys like her._

I look at him, considering, and decide that this popular, beautiful girl of his must be a shrew. Who could refuse to kiss Peeta Mellark? He’s sweet and handsome and smells _amazing_ …and it’s just a New Year’s kiss; not a toasting, for pity’s sake. “Maybe she’d kiss you for the cookie?” I suggest.

To my surprise, he laughs heartily in response. “Now _that_ ,” he says, “I might almost believe.”

* * *

The next morning I wake very early, dress in my oldest clothes, and quickly make my way downstairs. Peeta is already in the kitchen, of course, blending onions, cheese, and rosemary into the dough for my daily loaf, and I pop in to steal a handful of butter cookies and promise that I’ll be back in time for breakfast. But it’s the day before New Year’s Eve; I have a plan to enact and no time to waste.

Pollux is a part of this plan, and he’s already bundled up and waiting, coffee flask in hand, when I arrive at the stable. I’ve kept to hunting small game thus far – turkeys, geese, and dozens of fat, luxuriously furred rabbits – but I want to bring home a deer for Peeta’s New Year’s table, and I know I’ll need help with hauling it back, maybe even with the butchering. Pollux is willing to do whatever I need – he’s been emphatic on that point – but I want to spare him as much of the bloody work as possible.

Judging by hoof prints, Peeta’s woods is home to a small herd of deer, and I’ve got my sights set on the sleek pretty doe I saw on my first hunting venture. I see her and a few others frequently enough, stepping nimbly among the trees as I pass, all but unnoticed, and I don’t anticipate having to do much tracking at all, but with something as significant as Peeta’s New Year’s feast hinging on my success, I also don’t want to leave anything to chance. Hence heading to the woods before dawn with Pollux, bundled up to our eyes against the brittle cold and fortified with hot, strong coffee and butter cookies.

We trade bracing sips from the flask as we make our way into the woods, noiseless but for the soft crunch of our boots in the snow, and I wash down the bitter flavor, to Pollux’s silent glee, with frantic nibbles of cookie. I’ve warned him that, if need be, we’ll set up a makeshift blind in one of the trees along my usual route, but luck is almost unbelievably on our side. We’re barely fifteen minutes’ walk into the woods when I spot three deer moving like shadows in the rosy pre-dawn light: the doe we’re seeking; a rugged, broad-antlered buck that I’ve seen twice before and take to be her mate; and a second, younger buck, leanly muscled, with a low, narrow rack.

Time slows for an endless instant as I contemplate my options. The doe is almost too beautiful to kill; it’s what’s stopped me from drawing my bow on her more than once. Her face is long and finely boned, with liquid black eyes and a muzzle like velvet. By dawn-light her coat is pale as pearl; by starlight she would be silver. A creature too exquisite for any but the moon herself to hunt.

And I can’t shoot her mate either, however magnificent a kill he would be. She nuzzles his cheek with her snout, closing her liquid eyes, and he returns the gesture, bowing his great pronged head and breaking my heart. I can’t separate these two, and I certainly can’t kill them both. There’s a good chance she’s already pregnant, and a doe as fine as her is most likely carrying twins. Two wide-eyed, perfect fawns, spindly-legged and spotted, that she’ll hide behind mossy logs and ferns and clusters of wildflowers.

My father didn’t hunt deer all that often, and he avoided does in winter altogether if he could help it. As a shivering child with a grumbling belly and empty pockets, watching a meal and income prancing beneath our blind without Dad so much as raising his bow, I asked him why, and he promised me an answer in the spring. Six months later, my breath caught in wonder as he showed me two fawns curled together between a fallen tree and a patch of wood violets, the bright black snout of one tucked beneath the delicate eye socket of the other.

 _Your breasts are twin fawns,_ whispers my father’s voice in my mind, the words a pleasured gasp against my mother’s white skin.

I swiftly take aim at the young buck, just behind his right shoulder. _The perfect shot,_ Dad taught me as I leaned against his hip, squinting to follow the line of his arrow. _A quick, merciful death, preserving as much meat as possible. Granny Ashpet could make this shot like none other,_ he said, _and her arrowheads were so fine she barely marred the hides._

I think of my cougar-eyed grandmother, hunting does for her daily bread and tanning their hides for her wedding dress, and let the arrow fly. The young buck bleats and stumbles, the shaft of my arrow wedged firmly in his side, and the beautiful doe and her mate bound away.

The buck is breathing his last when I reach him, a weak puff of steam from his wet black snout, and I stroke the flat lobe of his brow with gloved fingers. He’s handsome enough to be the doe’s offspring, and I wonder if it hurt her when he cried out. “ _Thank you_ ,” I whisper. Dad did that sometimes, especially with deer. Thanked them for their lives; for their meat and hides and the money both would provide.

Pollux crouches beside me, a look in his eyes that I can only define as awestruck. He’s never watched me hunt before, and this may have been my finest shot ever.

“The big buck would’ve been more impressive,” I say with a flicker of regret, tracing the young buck’s lifeless muzzle with a fingertip. “Or the doe.” After all, I wanted a prize for Peeta’s table. I came out here expressly for that doe, only to settle for the least of three fine deer. The young buck is hardly a poor haul, but either the doe or her mate – a prime buck, magnificent in maturity – would have made a true trophy.

Pollux shakes his head firmly. He touches my chest with his fingertips, right over my heart, then gestures in the direction the doe and her mate fled. Of course – he was watching my face all along and probably read it like a book. Both he and Lavinia, I’m learning, are disarmingly perceptive at the nuances of expression – as though, by losing the power of speech, they’ve become adept not only at communicating their own thoughts without words but at deciphering the unspoken thoughts of others, just from the set of their lips or the look in their eyes.

“You don’t think Peeta will be disappointed?” I ask with a crooked smile, nodding down at the buck.

Pollux snorts and raises his eyebrows in a dubious expression. This is a common response to my questions and I’ve learned to translate it with ease: _Really, Katniss?_

I chuckle. “All right,” I say. “Let’s get this guy home. I’ve got a long morning’s work ahead of me.”

We carry the buck between us, his feet bound to a sturdy branch, and my shoulder burns pleasantly beneath the weight. I realize now how ridiculous it was to think I could bring home a deer solely for Peeta and me to eat. This young buck will yield a good sixty pounds of venison; enough to feed the two of us for _months_ – or everyone I know for New Year’s.

I’ve finally thought of something I can give as a present; something that can’t be purchased from a shop in town, and I’m fairly certain Peeta won’t mind. When I carve up the deer, I’ll set aside parcels of its meat for my family and Peeta’s – and for Rooba as well. She’ll be as glad of good fresh meat as anyone this time of year, and she can either enjoy it with her family or sell it for a tidy profit. Venison is as good as gold at New Year’s; Peacekeepers will pay top coin for even a small cut of steak. I figure I owe the district butcher _something_ for teaching her nephew how to roast meat so deliciously, and a parcel of venison is the very least I can do.

And maybe I can even send some to the Hawthornes. Just a few pounds of meat and a good soup bone will be several days’ feast for them, and surely Peeta won’t begrudge me sharing a tiny portion of his food with my friends. After all, he knows that my hunting habits fed many families besides my own; he even expressed concern about the food supply with me moving out of the district. He knows Gale works in the mines and that the woods near to town are sparse with game – probably because they’ve all moved on to the sanctuary that is Peeta’s stretch of woods – and he met Vick and Rory, maybe the whole family, when he took Prim there on her sleigh ride. And if nothing else, Peeta is the kindest, most generous person in the world. He won’t object to sharing food with a hungry family.

Pollux helps me hang the buck from a sturdy tree behind the stable, then I send him inside for a while; to feed Rye, I suggest. The truth, of course, is that gutting something as large as a deer is a bloody, messy process, and Pollux has experienced far too much horror in his life already. Not to mention, this will be the first deer I’ve butchered on my own and I’m a little nervous about being watched. I want to save as much of it as I can; even the blood, which I collect in a clean bucket placed beneath the carcass.

When my father was alive, deer blood was often the only part of the animal we got to eat, except for stock made from a bone or two that he kept back for Mom. He would drain and gut his kills and trade the meat and bones with the butcher, then he would come home and make “deer sausage” for us: a rich, flavorful “meat” filled with spices and berries and seeds, sometimes even little chunks of wild onion or katniss tubers. Prim in particular devoured the stuff; it was the most delicious thing we had to eat and finding it on the dinner table meant a special occasion indeed.

It wasn’t until I was old enough to tag along on a deer hunt that I discovered we had been eating _blood_ sausage all this time: deer’s blood mixed with a little of its fat, plus flour and seasonings, and cased in its stomach or intestine. I was as horrified as any child of eight would have been, but I knew my father and the value of what he brought to our table. “Deer sausage” didn’t cease to be tasty and nutritious just because I knew what it really was – although I made absolutely sure that Prim never found out. I took Dad aside after that hunt and told him sternly – to his great amusement – that she could never, _ever_ know what “deer sausage” was made of. _Don’t tell Prim?_ he echoed with a belly laugh. _I’ve been keeping this from your mother for thirteen years!_ You’re _the one who needs swearing to secrecy!_

I’m saving this deer’s blood for Rooba. It seems fair, since Dad used to keep the blood for us when he sold her his deer, and the butcher makes a myriad of sausages, _some_ of which must use blood for flavor – and even if not, she’s hardly a woman to waste an opportunity. Who knows; maybe “deer sausage” will become the newest delicacy among Peacekeepers and Merchants?

While the deer continues to drain, I extract and clean the organs as best I can and pack them in snow in a second bucket for Rooba. My arrow pierced the heart, but it’s a tough little muscle and will still make a fine meal, and the tongue and lungs and kidneys too. The rest of the innards I discard in the burn barrel, then I call Pollux back and set to work on skinning.

Removing a deerskin is not all that different from removing a rabbit skin, but if I want to make the best use of this one – and I _do_ – I need to figure out how to get rid of the hair. Dad usually gave his deerskins to Hazelle Hawthorne for tanning and they split the profits afterward. She learned from Granny Ashpet when she was very young, and as a laundress, Hazelle had time and opportunity for tanning work that a miner did not. I can flesh and tan the inner side of the skin easily enough, though I can tell it will be longer and harder work than _ten_ rabbit skins, but I need to ask Hazelle about the rest. I make a mental note to send a letter with her family’s meat parcel, asking her advice.

This is my first deerskin, and I want, _so_ much, to do it right – especially as I mean to make a present of it for Peeta. It’ll be a simple gift – probably just a ragged-edged blanket, since I’m terrified of ruining a perfect deerskin with clumsy sewing – but I’m looking forward to it. To feeling the skin grow soft and supple as I work it again and again. To Peeta’s face as I wrap him in a new golden deerskin, fleshed and stretched and tanned by my own hands.

Between the hauling and gutting, I’m exhausted by the time the skin is off, and I lament to Pollux that it’s too bad I don’t have a frame large enough to fit it. I can improvise with a couple of nearby trees, I suppose, or even stretch the skin across one side of the workroom, since I’ll be tending to it for a good long while, and anyway, there’s the fleshing and hair removal to come first. Pollux quirks a brow at this but makes no comment, neither on his slate nor in the snow. I wonder if he finds it amusing to catch me – Peeta’s acclaimed huntress – at a loose end.

“So I know mealtimes are flexible here,” calls Peeta’s voice from the back door of the stable, “but is there any chance either of you can stop for a quick breakfast, since at least one of you promised to join me?”

I turn to reply, and the sheer awe on Peeta’s face takes my breath away. “Not that…you aren’t busy with more important things,” he adds, his eyes flickering between the hanging buck and the fresh deerskin in my hands. “A _deer_ , Katniss,” he breathes, coming over to me. “You shot a _deer_.”

“For you,” I say. Despite the sharp cold of the morning, his praise makes me feel flushed and tingly all over. “For your New Year’s feast.”

“ _Our_ feast,” he corrects softly, brushing my hot cheek with his fingertips. “Do you have to finish everything right away?”

“Soon,” I tell him regretfully. “I hadn’t considered how much longer it would take, or I wouldn’t have said –”

He dismisses this with a shake of his head. “I guessed it was a larger venture, seeing as you left before breakfast and weren’t back two hours later,” he says, his eyes playful. “If you can spare a couple of minutes, I think I can get a hearty meal into both of you, or at least enough to tide you over till lunch.”

Pollux and I follow Peeta into the stable to find that he has brought breakfast to us. The butcher-paper surface of the workbench is now covered with food: a platter of toasted sandwiches filled with sausage, potato, egg, and cheese; slices of apple and sections of orange; six beautiful gingerbread snowflakes, each one iced in a different intricate pattern; and an enormous flask of sweet cream-coffee. Pollux and I race to the sink to clean up then I pounce on the cream-coffee, to sounds of mock-indignation from Pollux and laughter from Peeta.

“I should have warned you,” he tells Pollux with a sidewise wink at me. “I practically had to beg her to try cream-coffee the first time, and now she can’t leave it alone. I’ll bring over some bottles of cream later,” he teases. “I hear your coffee is pretty incomparable, and adding cream can only make it better, right?”

Pollux raises his brows at me, though I doubt he’s truly surprised that I told Peeta about his coffee, and he passes Peeta his own flask with a shrug. Peeta takes a generous sip and, to my everlasting delight, chokes as it goes down, though he covers the reaction with a manful sort of cough. “Very… _flavorful_ ,” he rasps, blinking furiously, as though the brew somehow burned his eyes. Pollux laughs heartily, and I’m long gone in giggles of my own.

We compromise by combining splashes of Pollux’s strong coffee with mugfuls of Peeta’s cream-coffee. “You weren’t kidding!” Peeta murmurs in my ear as he portions out cups for each of us. Pollux sips and nods at the blended brew, but I suspect that the virtues of cream-coffee are lost on him. Without a tongue, he can hardly discern sweetness or the rich, velvety texture that makes cream-coffee so irresistible, and I’m unsurprised when his second cup comes entirely from his own flask, accompanied by a little blush of apology.

While we eat, I share my plans for the deer – minus the skin, of course, which will be a surprise. I’m reluctant to tell Peeta that I mean to give so much meat away, especially as it’s the first deer I’ve brought home for his table, and I wince a little as I mention sending a small amount to the Hawthornes, but Peeta’s response couldn’t be more positive.

“That’s _perfect_ , Katniss!” he says eagerly when I’ve finished. “Venison and soup bones for our families and friends – and Aunt Rooba will go crazy over the blood and organ meats. Butcher’s kids grow up on the stuff, she says. The ‘leftovers,’ like baker’s kids and stale bread.”

“You’re sure?” I say. “It’s…well, our first deer, and –”

“And you’re right: we should share it with everyone we love,” he says quietly. There’s a strange look on his face that makes my breath catch in my throat and my heart stumble a little. “Send as much as you like to town, just be sure to save plenty for yourself.”

“Oh,” I say, understanding his words now. _Everyone we love._ I need to make a parcel of venison for his girl too. How had I forgotten her? “Who –?” I begin, but he’ll hardly tell me her name as easily as that, so I try another tactic. “How many in her family?” I ask. “Your girl – so I know how much meat to send.”

He looks at me for a long moment, and the love and longing in his eyes make me ache. _Not for me, not for me, not for me,_ chants a singsong voice in my head, like a madwoman or a taunting child.

“Just…send what you were planning on,” he says hoarsely, “and…keep plenty for yourself. That’ll take care of it.”

Of course. He means to feed his girl – his _sweetheart,_ corrects the mad voice in my head – and her family from his own family’s parcel. The Mellarks are well able to afford the best butcher meat for themselves – they certainly don’t _need_ ten pounds of game – and he probably thinks of this girl as part of his family already. I decide to cut back all the portions a little bit, except for Peeta’s, and make a separate parcel for her, to send along with the one for his family. They can deliver it from there; maybe even hand it to the girl or her parents along with their next bakery purchase, and it won’t require dividing their own portion.

It’s a good idea, if I do say so myself. It spares Peeta the embarrassment of sending the gift via Pollux and possibly having it rejected, and it prevents anyone from discovering his girl’s identity. But it sits in my chest like a dull ache, and I can’t begin to guess why.

My belly is pleasantly full with breakfast, and I focus on that instead as I go back out to carve my deer. By my calculations, it’ll break down to a little less than a quarter for each of us – my family, Peeta’s family, Rooba, and ourselves – with a few pounds reserved for the Hawthornes and Peeta’s girl and her family. It’s a long, labor-intense process, resulting in back, arm, and neck-aches and countless trails of sweat beneath my clothes, making my thermals cling and itch. I’m no butcher, just a practical hunter who knows where and how parts are connected. I worry that my cuts will make for inferior roasts and steaks, especially where Rooba’s portion is concerned, but I remind myself that few, if any, of these people have tasted venison recently and, likelier than not, _all_ of them will be overjoyed to receive a parcel of fine, _free_ meat for their New Year’s table, _however_ it’s carved.

When I’ve finished the bulk of the carving, with six surprisingly neat piles of prime young venison to show for it, I divide the deer’s ribs between Peeta and his girl. I’ve never eaten venison ribs, but Granny Ashpet made them sometimes when Dad was little and he always said they were an underappreciated feast, with some of the most delicious meat on the animal. Finally, I wrap everything in plenty of butcher paper and label it carefully with a bit of charcoal that I suspect Peeta left for me when he took the breakfast dishes. _Hawthornes, Butcher Shop, Bakery, Everdeens._ I debate how to label the parcel for Peeta’s girl and finally, perhaps a little spitefully, settle for being literal. _Peeta’s Sweetheart,_ I write in bold black letters. It’s high time someone called her on her rejection of that sweet, gentle boy. Maybe it’s not my place, but I’m his friend as well as his huntress, and he deserves much better than solitude with servants in the beautiful house he prepared just for her.

“This goes to the bakery,” I tell Pollux, setting her parcel next to the one for Peeta’s family. He reads the label then looks up at me, a small smile playing about his lips. I wonder if he knows who the girl is and finds my ignorance amusing.

I save the deer’s head intact, to Pollux’s shock and well-concealed nausea, and leave it, covered with a sheet of butcher paper, on the workbench. I don’t have a plan for the antlers yet, but I wouldn’t be able to work on them for a while anyway, and the brain keeps just as well inside the skull. There’s no point in removing it till I’ve heard back from Hazelle on the dehairing the skin, and I’ve got plenty of work as it is with fleshing the hide.

I do that last of all, laying out the skin near the stable stove and kneeling on the floor beside it, sleeves pushed to my elbows as I carefully work away the fat and flesh, using my broadest, dullest blade and slow, shallow, meticulous strokes, so as not to mar the skin beneath. The flesh I set aside for burning as waste, but the fat I save in yet another bucket, this one for Hazelle. She renders it – any animal fat she can get hold of, really – into tallow, a hard white wax of sorts that can be made into candles, soap, salve, and dozens of other useful things. The oil I use for my bow is made of deer tallow, in fact. It’s as good a wood preservative as any oil you can buy from a Merchant and much cheaper to boot. Hazelle used to make bow oil for my father from the fat on the deerskins he brought her, and once I started hunting with Gale, she did the same for us.

By the time I’ve peeled the last bit of flesh from my precious deerskin, I’m sweaty and sticky and impossibly sore from all the kneeling and stooping and tiny repetitive motions, but I still need to wash the skin and hang it for drying. Pollux provides a washtub of warm water and soap, as I’ve come to expect by now, but as I finish rinsing the skin he returns to me with a message on his slate, his first of the day: _I’ll finish cleaning up and hang the skin for you._

I shake my head automatically, despite how bone-weary and filthy I am. “It’s okay,” I tell him, lifting the dripping, leaden-heavy skin from the tub with trembling arms. “I’ll just –”

To my astonishment, he whisks the wet skin out of my hands as though it weighs nothing at all and shakes his head firmly. _Me,_ he mouths, hefting the skin a little, demonstratively, then he nods toward the house. Toward a hot bath and clean clothes and maybe even a nap.

Pollux has watched me handle dozens of rabbit skins in the past month. He even stretched some of them for me in the small frames he built, and all the deerskin requires right now is to be hung up for a thorough, day-long drying. He’s so willing to help in any way, and this is little enough to entrust him with.

Not to mention, I’m too exhausted to refuse his offer. “ _Thank you_ ,” I moan in reply, on behalf of every muscle in my body, and all but run back to the house.

Processing the deer took so long that Peeta’s in the kitchen finishing lunch when I return, but he drops everything to meet me in the mudroom and, ridiculously, hug me about the waist and swing me around in gleeful, giddy circles, making my feet fly out from under me. I give a little yelp of surprise, but the flush on my cheeks is a happy one, and I curl my arms around his neck without a care in the world for the hide-water they were elbow-deep in just a minute earlier.

“My huntress,” he sings in a silly but surprisingly tuneful voice. The sort of voice that would never win a sweetheart with its beauty but could soothe a sick or sobbing child and lull them to sleep in his arms. “My clever, perfect, _beautiful_ huntress,” he croons against my temple.

I laugh at this foolishness, but his merriment is catching. _My baker,_ I answer silently, pressing my face against the warm skin of his neck. _My sweet, gentle, perfect boy._

“I thought a shower might be nice,” he says, setting me down at last, though he still holds me close. “A shower, fresh clothes, and lunch on the sofa, followed by a nap?”

“ _Oh,_ you thought right,” I groan, leaning my forehead against his chin. Something warm and feathery and _familiar_ brushes the skin at my hairline, but I’m so tired and it feels _so_ good, I don’t pause to question what it might be.

“Did you save any deer fat, by chance?” he murmurs, a pleasant hum against my brow.

“Mmm,” I reply drowsily. “In a bucket. I was going to send it to Hazelle for tallow, but keep as much as you like.”

He chuckles softly and leans back, and my body protests it like the swift removal of a coverlet on a cold morning. “I only need a little,” he tells me with a crooked smile. “Go shower before you fall asleep on me, and I’ll have lunch ready when you’re done.”

I don’t need to be told twice.

I’m out of my clothes almost before the bathroom door has shut behind me and unplait my hair as I switch on one blissfully warm spray after another, dipping back and forth between the rock walls of the magnificent cave shower. Peeta was exactly right; a shower is just what I need today. A bath would be cozier, but I need to rinse away the morning, and the pulse of the myriad little waterfalls is better than a balm on my sore muscles. I scrub my scalp and forearms and clean my nail beds over and over again, and for the first time ever, this incalculable luxury feels _earned_. A fit exchange for a deer hunter’s labors: hauling and hanging and gutting; skinning and carving and fleshing. I wonder if the moon herself ever received such a reward at the end of a hunt: a cave of warm waterfalls and soap like the very essence of the sun to wash the grime of her kill from her silvery limbs.

I emerge from the shower into heated towels, waiting for me in Lavinia’s patient hands. She wraps my hair atop my head before drying my body then pours out palmfuls of the spicy floral oil she often adds to my bath and massages it thoroughly into my neck, back, and arms. I don’t know how she knew I was sore, but I’m so grateful for her ministrations that my eyes bead with tears.

She helps me into clean underthings, leggings, and a cream-colored sweater of silken-soft wool, and my warm, soothed muscles melt their way down to the kitchen. I find Peeta by the stove, deeply focused on scraping the last bit of _something_ from a saucepan, but what he’s working on doesn’t look like my meal. There are baking sheets all along the worktop, each of them lined with waxed paper and holding four or five of Grandma Lydda’s cookie cutters with a creamy brown substance inside, flecked with cornmeal, wheat berries, nuts, seeds, even little bits of fruit.

A month ago I would have been perplexed by such a sight, maybe even imagined the festive shapes to be puddings of some kind for our New Year’s table or even his family’s, but I know Peeta now, and his tender habits that make me cry in unguarded moments. I have a fair guess as to what these are – or at least, who they’re intended for.

He hasn’t seen me yet, intent as he is on pouring the last drops of his mixture into one final cookie cutter, so I come up behind him, stealthy as can be, and stand on tiptoe to rest my chin on his shoulder. “Is this lunch?” I tease.

He turns his head just enough to lean his cheek against my forehead, and he sighs – or maybe I do. “Hello to you too,” he chuckles, a breathy sound with a catch in the middle. “It’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, actually, but not for us. These are suet cakes, for the birds.”

Suet I know, a little, and it explains the creaminess of the mixture. When Dad was still alive, Mom saved every last bit of fat drippings from our meals and stored it in a jar on top of the stove, and once she had a jarful she’d mix it with flour, molasses, a precious pinch of cinnamon and maybe nutmeg too, and bits of whatever kinds of fruit Dad brought home, and make what she called a "suet pudding." A rich, earthy sort of spiced "cake" that warmed and filled your belly all at once, minus the costly fine sugar that made similar bakery cakes so alluring.

“Grandma Lydda called these ‘bird cakes,’” Peeta goes on. “We made them when we were really little as a New Year’s treat for the birds. Aunt Rooba would bring over a pound of lard and we would add nuts and seeds and crumbs from our stalest bread. Then, once the cakes hardened, Dad punched little holes in the tops and we hung them up in the apple tree for the birds to eat.”

Nuts and fruits and seeds, molded into whimsical holiday shapes and held together with nourishing animal fat…everything a bird needs to sustain itself through the winter. No wonder they love this boy.

“Of course, these cakes are made with deer fat,” he adds, and I feel his cheek tug up in a smile. “Rest assured: I only took a little from Hazelle’s bucket. It just…seemed right to use that instead of drippings from bacon or sausage, especially at New Year’s.”

“Of course it was,” I say, sinking down onto my heels to lay my cheek against his back. “You wanted that deer to feed everyone you love.”

Peeta sets aside his saucepan and turns, almost abruptly, to cradle my arms in the curve of his and draw me close. “My huntress,” he murmurs, his eyes dark and warm. “I told you all I wanted was your happiness, and you brought me a deer that will feed _everyone,_ even my birds.”

“I’m…your huntress,” I say, but the words, obvious as they are, come haltingly to my lips. “I bring you game. It’s…what I do.”

“You bring me _treasures_ ,” he corrects softly, and I wonder for a split second if he’s figured out my plan for the deerskin, since he saw it briefly before breakfast. Or if he could possibly have guessed about the muffler, since I brought him rabbit after rabbit for the better part of a month.

Then again, as hard as I’ve worked on those skins, no one would ever call them – or a gift made from them – _treasures_.

“Lunch is in the living room,” he says with a grin. “And your nap, if you like.”

I follow him to the living room and nestle into a corner of the sofa while he portions out the meal that awaits us on the low table. A thick soup, rich with cream and bacon and roasted onion, with hearty chunks of potato and plump kernels of sweet corn in every savory spoonful. Cheese buns, crisp at their golden tops but still warm and doughy inside. Hot chocolate and bite-sized peanut butter cookies, perfect for dunking.

I forsake my corner of the sofa after a minute or two and inch over to rest my head on Peeta’s shoulder as I sleepily spoon his delicious soup into my mouth, holding the bowl to my chest as the distance between my lap and my lips yawns ever wider. Drowsiness and hunger are fighting fiercely for control of my faculties, especially now that I’m in a soft seat with the quiet crackle of flames enticing me to slumber, and I don’t protest when Peeta gently coaxes the bowl and spoon from my hands.

“You’re _asleep_ , sweetheart,” he whispers, brushing a lock of damp hair back from my face where it lolls against his shoulder. “I’ll save this, okay?” he assures me. “You sleep now, for as long as you like, and there will be lots more food when you wake up.”

“Okay,” I mumble, nuzzling my face against him like a sleepy fox kit. “Not too long, though.”

I give a cross, sleepy whine when his shoulder eases out from beneath my cheek, but then my weary body is being maneuvered, with impossible tenderness, to lie on its side along the length of the sofa. My legs are lifted onto a cushion and a small pillow, sweet with pine, is tucked beneath my head.

“So good,” I sigh, and then there is a coverlet of fur over me, soft and heavy and white as fresh snow, blanketing my small form from cheek to toes. “Thank you,” I whisper, stretching out a hand to stay the companion who is tending to me with such care.

Warm, strong fingers close around mine, and I sleep.

* * *

_I’m in the little shack by the lake with a lapful of rabbit skins, humming as I stitch them together in a large loop of dense winter fur. Another hums with me; a woman’s voice in a sweet, soaring countermelody I’ve never heard before, and I turn to tell Lavinia how much I like this new tune of hers – but it’s not Lavinia. The woman behind me is Seam-born, black-haired and startlingly beautiful, with clear olive skin and eyes the green-gold of a cougar’s. Spread over a log on the floor between us is a fresh deerskin and she kneels beside it, removing the fat and flesh with deep, fluid strokes of a strange tool: a narrow strip of wood with a shallow blade embedded at its center, held between her strong tanned hands._

_She ceases her humming but does not pause in her work. “Catkin,” she says, “for whom do you sew these furs?”_

_An easy question, I think, however formally posed. “For my friend,” I reply. “The boy who feeds and clothes me and keeps me warm. These furs will wrap his neck and keep him well and warm all through the winter.”_

_She tips her head, considering, and something shifts – a flicker of green-gold light, a brief gust of wind – and my lap is filled with even more rabbit skins, only this time they form a wide pillow, which I am stuffing with silky handfuls of wild goose down._

_Granny Ashpet’s deerskin is on a frame now, stretched taut and nearly covering one wall of the tiny shack, and she stands barefoot before it, working the skin with a tool that looks like a branch or a long bone with a blunt, angled end. “Catkin,” she says, “for whom did you pluck this down and sew these furs?”_

_Her question has the phrasing of a riddle in a fairy tale, but the answer is simple –_ deceptively so? _I wonder. “For the one who shares my bed,” I tell her. “Who holds me through the night, though we never touch, and warms me with the resonance of their heartbeat. This pillow will make their slumber as sweet and easeful as they have made mine, and perhaps bring them the sort of fairy tale dreams that their presence has brought me.”_

_The world shifts again in a blink of my grandmother’s feline eyes, and now I am on my hands and knees, fleshing my own deerskin, and Granny Ashpet sits cross-legged on the floor beside me, her lap draped with supple sheets of soft ivory leather. Two perfect doeskins, I realize; Granny Ashpet’s bridal doeskins. She’s sewing her wedding dress._

_“Catkin,” she says, and her voice is a whisper, an echo in the wind. “For whom do you flesh that deerskin?”_

_A third and final question, in the poetic manner of fairy tales, with the same answer as the first. “For my friend,” I say again; a little bolder this time, oddly afraid that my response will not suffice. “To wrap him in warmth and comfort when he is sick or cold or afraid.”_

_“The pale doe would have made a finer gift,” she says. “You knew it well, and went to the woods for that very purpose. Why did you spare her?”_

_My grandmother is a skilled huntress with her own reasons for passing up game at one time or another. She knows the doe was beautiful –_ too beautiful to kill, _as I told myself on more than one occasion – but there was more to my decision than that. Granny Ashpet knows all of this; knows_ all _of my reasons, only too well, and tests me with her riddles and her eyes._

_“For her mate,” I admit softly. “A strong, handsome buck, as golden as the sun, who nuzzled her cheek and put fawns in her belly.”_

_Her green-gold eyes flare strangely, like flickers of fairy-light over the lake at dusk. “Catkin,” she says again, and her voice is less than a whisper now; less even than an echo. A soughing of wind through cattails, and it raises the hairs at the nape of my neck. “For whom do you flesh that deerskin?” she asks, and her hands still over her bridal doeskins for my reply._

_“For a boy,” I whisper. “A strong, handsome boy, as golden as the sun.”_

_“For your mate,” she breathes, in a voice like a dead tree groaning in the wind, and I shiver, but not in fear. “Do you wish him to nuzzle your cheek and put fawns in your belly?” she asks._

_At these words I feel a kick deep inside the cradle of my hips, just below my navel. A tiny hoof, I wonder, or a dainty snout?_

_There is a fire in the shack’s hearth now, and I see in its flames the image Granny Ashpet painted with her words. A strong, stocky boy with curls of creamed honey and a crown of antlers resting upon them. A gentle warrior who feeds birds and slays bears; who bakes and paints and tends to my humble needs as though I am the most precious being on this earth. I feel his warm, pale flesh beneath my cheek and hands as we lie together, skin to skin, nestled beneath a coverlet of white bear’s fur._

_I feel the fawn, or her brother, kick again, and the boy’s chest hums beneath my cheek with quiet laughter at the gambols of his children_. Twin fawns, _I muse. This boy’s dam was a twin, and his seed sprouted twins in my belly. One golden as the sun, the other silvery as the moon, and I want them – want_ this _– so badly that I sob against my boy’s chest and make the flame-vision shatter like an ice-crusted puddle at a heavy footfall._

_“He is not mine,” I whisper, as a chorus of taunting children and madwomen jeer in my head. Not for me, not for me, not for me…_

_Granny Ashpet shakes her head, and the look in her eyes is one of my father’s own: affectionate exasperation. “Little Katniss,” she says ruefully, “how can you strike the heart of a young buck without piercing either lung, and yet you cannot see what lies directly before you?”_

* * *

“ _Katniss_ ,” says a soft voice. “Katniss, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

My head lies on something solid and warm, and a gentle hand strokes my hair in slow, soothing motions. My eyes are wet and burning and my breath comes in short, shallow gasps. The patch of wool beneath my cheek is damp and cold.

I open my eyes to find myself much as I had been when I fell asleep: leaning against Peeta, but this time his arm is around me, cradling me to his chest as his other hand caresses my hair. “I came to check on you and you were crying,” he says, and his face, hovering over mine, is drawn with concern. “Were you having a bad dream?”

“Not bad,” I rasp, rubbing my eyes against his sweater in a feeble attempt to staunch the tears that seem to be spouting up directly from my heart. “It was…a strange dream,” I tell him. “An impossible one.”

 _But which is more impossible?_ wonders a voice that is more my grandmother’s haunting sigh than the cruel chorus of children and madwomen who persist in tormenting me today. _That you could conceive and carry twin fawns, or that Peeta Mellark would choose you for his mate?_ Both prospects are equally absurd, and yet in waking to possess neither when just heartbeats ago I had both, I’m struck by a wave of grief that forces the breath from my lungs in ragged sobs.

“Shh,” Peeta soothes, pressing his cheek to my forehead, and he rocks me a little. I’m in his lap, I realize, and draw in my knees to lean fully against him. “What was it about?” he asks gently, curling an arm across my shins and tugging me a little deeper into the warm nest formed by his body. “Would it help to tell me?”

 _Furs and deerskins and fairy tale riddles,_ I think. _New Year’s gifts and bridal gowns and a marriage bed blanketed in bearskin._

“Baby fawns,” I whisper.

His breath catches. “Oh, Katniss,” he says, and I hear my grief in his voice. “Was it a doe? The deer you brought home…was she –?”

“ _No_ ,” I say quickly, sick to my stomach at the thought. I’d rather die of hunger than shoot a doe now. “I-I saw the doe first,” I sniffle. “I went out looking for her, even, b-but…I let her go.”

“So…the fawns are okay?” he says hopefully, handing me his handkerchief. I feel a little bad for him, even overwrought as I am. He doesn’t have a clue what my dream was about and is trying to console me on the basis of the tiny threads I’ve given him.

“The fawns are _g-gone_ ,” I choke, wiping clumsily at my nose and eyes with the soft square of cloth. “They were _inside_ me – m-my _babies_ – stretching and kicking…a-and _happy_ ,” I realize. The fawns _were_ happy, nestled in my belly where I lay against my mate, and able to hear and feel us both.

“ _Oh_ ,” Peeta sighs. His voice is no longer sorrowful but _awestruck_. “You were pregnant with fawns, Katniss?” he breathes. “That…that might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you cried to wake up from it.”

I sit up a little, frowning at him. I’d expected a laugh, maybe a remark about how bizarre the dream was; not this breathless blend of awe and fascination. I’d think Peeta was making fun of me, but I know him better than that now, and even if I didn’t, there’s no teasing or mockery in his eyes. Just softness and a sort of naked longing – a hunger, almost – that tugs at the hollow of my belly.

“Beautiful?” I say in disbelief. “For me to be pregnant with baby deer?”

“Mmm,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment as though savoring the thought. “You being pregnant would be a stunning sight in any case,” he murmurs, smiling down at me, “but the fawns give it an incredible fairy tale element. I’ll paint it for you someday, and then you’ll see.”

I stare back at him, confused and a little pitying. I’ve long suspected that Peeta wants children, but apparently the urge is so strong that he finds the notion of his huntress pregnant with game a _beautiful_ thing. It must be all the talk of his sweetheart; of New Year’s and kissing boughs and cookies.

I want to reassure him; to tell him that his girl will marry him one day soon and give him a houseful of curly-haired children to cling to his knees and squeal with delight over his beautifully frosted cookies, but my tongue refuses to form the words. “You’re going to be an amazing father, Peeta,” I say instead. “Your sweetheart is a very lucky girl.”

He shakes his head with a sad smile. “It’s me who’ll be the lucky one,” he says, brushing a stray tear from my cheek with his thumb. “If I ever win her heart.”

I think of the choice venison I carved and parceled so carefully for that girl and wonder why the prospect of helping Peeta win the sweetheart he’s loved for so long makes me feel like crying all over again.

“Supper will be another fifteen minutes or so,” he says, brightening a little. “But if you’re feeling up to it, you could come and help me fill the New Year’s baskets.”

Of course. Peeta will have finished his holiday baking while I slept, and the baskets for our families are going to town with Pollux in the morning.

I follow him to the kitchen to find the worktop covered with plates of cookies and breads and the table set with four baskets, each of which already holds a wrapped cake of some kind and a small covered crock. “Everybody gets ginger cake and custard,” he explains happily, “and we’ll add snow ice cream in the morning, but the rest is up to you. There’s one for my family and yours, plus Aunt Rooba and the Hawthornes.”

I look up in surprise and his cheeks mottle with a painful blush. “I thought…since you were sending them meat and things,” he says fumblingly, “but if you think they won’t…if it would upset them –”

“No,” I assure him quickly. “It’s…really generous of you. They’ll appreciate it.”

Gale might be too proud for charity, but Hazelle has three other mouths to feed, including tiny four-year-old Posy, who barely knows what sugar tastes like. A basket of rich New Year’s sweets, on top of a parcel of venison and fat for precious tallow, might break Hazelle’s heart, and she’ll go half-crazy trying to repay Peeta for it, but she won’t turn it down. It’ll be worth the mountain of debt to watch her boys stuff their sunken faces with cookies and cake for one glorious day.

Peeta and I each take charge of two baskets and he urges me to pick as many things as I like for my family and the Hawthornes. He’s made small loaves of several of my favorite breads to choose among, and I make sure both of my baskets get two different kinds, plus a little parcel of my beloved cheese buns and an assortment of festive cookies. I give Mom and Prim the ones I pressed out myself, that snug wonderful morning in the kitchen with Peeta, and the Hawthornes the handsomer cookies, shaped and frosted by Peeta’s skillful hands. If we’re already overloading them with gifts of food, said food might as well be pretty, and little Posy will fall in love with Peeta’s snowman butter cookies on sight.

Supper is simmering in a large covered skillet at the front of the stove, and Peeta playfully swats my hand away when I try to peek beneath the lid, only to lift it himself and bathe our faces in a cloud of savory steam, rich with wine and cider spices and the succulent aroma of crisp-fried chicken. “This is my Grandma Brognar’s recipe,” he says. “Grandma Elske. She was a quiet, colorless sort of woman married to a big brute of a butcher, and according to Aunt Rooba, this was one of about three dishes she made that her husband didn’t throw back at her with a bellow.”

Peeta rarely talks about his mother’s side of the family, and I’m beginning to understand why. “They sound charming,” I reply, and he chuckles dryly.

“Grandpa Brognar’s own rage did him in, they say,” he goes on. “Aunt Rooba stood up to him one day; told him to stop knocking around Mom and her brother, and gave him a wallop to the jaw for good measure. She was thirteen, I think,” he says, “and Mom and Uncle Luka about nine. The shock of it burst a blood vessel in his head and he dropped like a stone. Died a couple days later, and by all accounts, nobody was too broken up over it.”

I raise my brows at this account. Peeta’s grandfather makes his mother sound downright pleasant – and makes me wonder how on earth Peeta and his brothers ended up so nice and even-tempered.

This must show on my face somehow, because Peeta gives a genuine laugh then and continues, “We’re all Mellark, for the most part: steady, mild, hard-working baker stock – boring, really,” he chortles. “Luka’s got a little of his namesake in him,” he admits. “It’s probably why he’s Mom’s favorite. But at the end of the day, even _he_ doesn’t have the Brognar temper. There’s too much of Dad in all of us,” he says with a wink.

I think of the baker, strong and gentle and generous, and consider telling Peeta that such a heritage is no bad thing. “So Grandma Elske calmed her angry brood with this?” I tease. “It must be some amazing chicken.”

I say this by way of angling for a taste, and Peeta accordingly fishes out a wing and flakes off a forkful of white meat and golden batter, which he raises to my mouth. The bite melts on my tongue, not unlike a piece of bacon, except the chicken batter is slightly sweet, with a subtle tanginess and a whisper of cider, all of which combine to make me moan with pleasure.

“Well, she _was_ a butcher’s wife,” he reminds me with a grin. “Grandma Elske could make grown men cry with her steaks and roasts, even if she started with the oldest, toughest cut of beef at the back of her icebox. And the secret to her chicken was the simmer,” he confides. “After you fry it crisp, you drain the fat and drippings to make your gravy, then you put the chicken back in the skillet and simmer it with a little wine.”

“And where does the cider come in?” I ask, stealing another pinch of batter from the wing.

“From the fact that the girl I live with loves cider,” Peeta says quietly. “And I’ve yet to add it to anything that didn’t turn out incredible.”

This time it’s my turn to blush.

We opt to eat in the kitchen while we finish filling our baskets, and most of the meal is devoured while hovering at the worktop: greedy stolen forkfuls of fried chicken, small red-skinned potatoes and carrots tossed with butter and garlic, and a heady golden gravy that makes me whimper at my first taste, which we mop up with slices of this morning’s rosemary-cheese bread.

Peeta watches as I carefully select each item for my family’s basket and the Hawthornes’, and after a minute or two of this I feel his merriment fade. “Katniss,” he says softly, drawing my eyes, and the expression in his is a heartbreaking combination of apology and regret. “Do you want to go with Pollux tomorrow and spend the holiday with your family?” he asks. “I didn’t think – I should have offered sooner. Would…” His voice catches. “Would you like to go home for New Year’s?”

This is the first time since the night I told him I’d stay that the thought of going back to town has even entered my mind, and the tug in my heart is related to his choice of words, not the alternative he’s offering. “I thought I _was_ home,” I whisper. “But if you want –”

“Stay,” he whispers back, coming forward to take my hands in his. “Stay with me, Katniss. _Always._ ”

* * *

New Year’s Eve is a bustling day in Twelve, full of cooking and cleaning and last-minute holiday preparations, and it’s looking to be an unusual one here, as I discover when Lavinia comes down to breakfast with me. Peeta’s made both her and Pollux welcome in the house at all times, and no less during meals, but they prefer to keep their distance for the most part – especially, for some reason, when Peeta and I are together – and since I’ve been here, they’ve never joined us for a meal 

Pollux is already in the kitchen when we arrive, dressed warmly for his sleigh journey this morning and settling down at the table with a plate of sausages, eggs, and griddle-toast and a hearty bowl of oatmeal. “Good,” Peeta says over his shoulder from the stove. “You’re all here.” He dishes up heaping portions for Lavinia and me and finally for himself, then we join Pollux at the table.

The four of us have never all been in a room together, though I know the three of _them_ have been, countless times before, and it’s a little bizarre for me. I’ve never been with both Pollux and Lavinia at the same time – I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen them within a stone’s throw of each other – and a silly part of me has wondered if they even _exist_ in each other’s presence.

“Tomorrow is New Year’s Day,” Peeta announces, his bright eyes dancing. “Since it’s the first New Year’s we’re all spending together, I thought it might be nice to share some of my family’s traditions – unless, of course –”

“I think I can guarantee we’ll love your family’s traditions,” I interrupt, to grins and nods from Pollux and Lavinia.

“Good,” Peeta says again, a little shyly this time, with just a hint of a blush tinging his cheekbones. “I’ll explain them as we go along, and if any of you don’t like what we’re doing, or you want to do something else, just let me know, okay?”

I let Pollux and Lavinia answer this time, knowing full well that if a Mellark New Year’s is anything at all like an ordinary day with Peeta, I’ll love every minute of it. Pollux shakes his head, which I’ve discovered is his way of dismissing a question that’s too obvious to answer, and Lavinia quirks one dark brow, which can mean just about anything, but Peeta seems to translate it easily enough in any situation.

"Okay,” he affirms with a grin. “All you need to know right now is that New Year’s is one of very few days that the bakery doesn’t open, and as such it’s one of even fewer days when baker’s kids come to breakfast in their pajamas.”

I envision a small, chubby Peeta in thermals, red-cheeked and swinging his slippered feet beneath the table, and wonder what this translates to in Peeta at sixteen.

“When you’re a baker’s son, you learn to get dressed before your eyes are open and be in the kitchen before you’ve tied your shoes,” he explains, his blush deepening. “But on New Year’s we didn’t have to be up for anything but breakfast, let alone get dressed for work, so we tended to linger in pajamas as long as possible – which is Marko’s fault, really,” he adds with a chuckle. “He was always responsible for getting me and Luka up and dressed, and on days when he didn’t have to, he’d get himself up and leave us to our own devices. Once he saw that meant eating New Year’s breakfast in our pajamas, he followed suit.”

“So does this mean you want _us_ in pajamas at breakfast?” I ask, finally catching his hint.

Beside me, Pollux snorts with laughter and Peeta turns crimson. “No – I mean…it’s not that I _want_ that,” he clarifies hastily. “I just…you _can_ – if you want. I mean –” He blushes, somehow, deeper still, all the way to the collar of his sweater. “You can wear anything anytime, of course, but…at New Year’s, well…it’s tradition.”

I shrug, uncertain as to what all the fussing and stammering was about. “Okay,” I say. “That’s easily done. What else?”

Peeta smiles mischievously. “The rest you’ll find out tomorrow,” he tells us all. “But before you go to bed tonight, I need each of you to leave a shoe and stocking on the porch.”

I’d expected this, or some variation thereof, but the instruction still tugs up the corners of my mouth in a smile as slow and irrepressible as sunrise. Peeta means to give us – three grown people, all of whom work for him in some capacity – coal and sweets on New Year’s morning, like a coddled brood of Merchant children.

It’s ridiculous and unnecessary and utterly adorable. _If he treats his “servants,” like this,_ I wonder, _what on earth will he do for his children?_

“Anyway, eat up,” Peeta says cheerfully, gesturing at our plates. “Pollux will be leaving for town shortly, of course, so if anyone wants anything from the shops before New Year’s, let him know.”

Peeta and I finish our meal quickly and head outside with his two largest mixing bowls to collect fresh snow for the ice cream we’re sending to town. We make several batches, using so much cream and sugar that I can barely breathe at the thought of the expense. There’s one with nutmeg and vanilla, the first kind Peeta ever made for me and still my favorite; another with cinnamon and ground white chocolate, drizzled throughout with icy threads of honey; one with swirls of custard and crumbles of fresh ginger cake; and still another with splashes of cold cider and bits of honey-roasted almonds.

These we divide into half-gallon crocks and squeeze two into each basket, which are already packed to capacity with bread, cake, and cookies and topped, in true Peeta-fashion, with large wrapped bricks of shortbread, painted with the family name of the recipients and patterned with pine boughs and ribbons and little red birds. It’s a good thing Pollux and Lavinia have been taking extra firewood to town all along: between the New Year’s baskets – each of which must weigh nearly thirty pounds – and my parcels of venison, there’ll barely be room in the sleigh for Pollux himself.

I run up to my hobby room to retrieve the letters I wrote last night before bed, to add them to the baskets for my family and the Hawthornes, and on the way back I meet Peeta coming out of his art room with a large flat envelope in his hands, about as big as a notebook. “These are for your mom and Prim,” he says, carefully sliding out the contents to show me. “They’re just sketches, but I’m including a note: whichever one they like best, I’ll turn into a painting for their house.”

He places the sketches in my hands and I gasp at the image topping the pile: a small figure in a hooded coat skating on the lake, as seen from the window of Peeta’s art room. It’s the sketch I saw on my first day here, or one very much like it, drawn on fine heavy paper and delicately painted here and there with splashes of color. Winter-blue sky; a red coat trimmed with white fur. Snowbanks dusted with a diamond-like shimmer. A black speck – a chickadee – perched on the back of a wrought-iron bench.

I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.

My trembling fingers discover half a dozen more sketches behind it, deftly captured and belonging in a fairy tale – the cold, breathtaking winter sort that Lydda Mellark told her boys around the fire. Katniss building a snowman. Katniss throwing snowballs. Katniss making a snow angel. Katniss on snowshoes. Katniss caressing a pony’s broad cheek. Katniss feeding birds.

“I wanted them to see how happy you are,” he says softly, tracing a fingertip around the image of me on my knees in the snow, surrounded by sparrows pecking at the breadcrumbs I’d brought them. “That your life isn’t a desperate search for food and warmth anymore.”

I look up at this boy, the very embodiment of food and warmth, in whose house I’ve never wanted for anything. This boy who’s clearly stolen time from his much-needed naps to paint these beautiful little pictures of me, just to show my family that I’m all right here. “These are _perfect_ , Peeta,” I whisper, stroking each tiny painted sparrow in turn. “They’ll love it.”

He smiles, the sun-bearing smile that melts my insides like a honeypot’s, and the words fall out before I can stop them. “Would you paint something for me sometime?” I ask.

I wince at the question but Peeta’s smile only softens. “Maybe I already have,” he says mysteriously, brushing my cheek with a fingertip. “And of course I will. Again and again.”

We go downstairs and retrieve our coats, then the four of us each take a basket and head out front to finish loading the sleigh. “Be aware, Pollux: you may be reviving a centuries-lost Father Christmas legend today,” Peeta teases as he maneuvers the Hawthornes’ basket onto the floor of the sleigh, alongside their parcel of venison and the tallow bucket.

He’s not far wrong. Pollux is much younger than Father Christmas in any of the stories I’ve heard, but a merry, bearded man driving a pony-drawn sleigh through the district on New Year’s Eve is bound to bring a spark of hope to even the poorest, most desperate household.

“He’s taking extra cookies,” Peeta tells me quietly, indicating a large paper sack on the floor of the sleigh that I hadn’t noticed him packing. “Not enough for everybody in town, of course, but there should be plenty for any Seam kids who might see him at the Hawthornes’.”

I fist my hands at my sides and refuse to let myself hug this boy, for fear that if I do, I might never let him go. _Why are you so good?_ my heart cries, perhaps for the hundredth time. Letting me send meat to the Hawthornes was more than enough, but he gave them a basket full of bread and sweets and snow ice cream besides – and now cookies for their starving neighbors’ children. Peeta knows he can’t feed everyone, but that doesn’t stop him from helping the all the ones that he _can_ , be they chipmunks or sparrows or hollow-eyed Seam kids.

“Thank you,” I choke, nudging his shoulder with mine in a feeble alternative to a hug, and Peeta leans into the touch, pressing his cold cheek to my temple.

“It’s the very least I can do,” he murmurs. “Next time we’ll send some flour or firewood.”

I don’t know whether he means the next trip to town or next New Year’s Eve, but the generosity of both options prickles at the corners of my eyes. “Careful,” I warn with a shaky laugh. “The Hawthornes are proud people, and they can be pretty aggressive about repaying their debts.”

Peeta chuckles gently. “I’ve had a certain amount of success lately when it comes to canceling such debts,” he reminds me. “I think these proud Hawthornes and I might be able to come to an understanding.”

I look up at him, considering. He’s done something, I realize, or will soon; something significant to help Gale’s family. I wonder what it is, or if I even want to know.

He grins at my scowl and strokes the tip of my nose with a gloved fingertip. “So worried,” he teases. “Are all Seam folk as passionate as you about refusing good things that are freely given?”

“Worse, probably,” I admit, making him laugh outright.

Pollux drives off into the crisp winter morning, his pockets filled with sugar cubes for Rye and the katniss-patterned sleigh bursting at its seams with gifts, and the three of us remaining return to the house, Peeta to the kitchen and Lavinia and I to the living room, to string our cranberry garland for the apple tree. I finished my own sewing several nights ago and haven’t kept company with Lavinia in longer than that, owing to the secret nature of the pillow project, so it’s a doubly pleasant activity.

We sit on either side of the sofa with yards and yards of string between us and a needle on each end and thread berry after deep red berry toward the center. I start the humming this time with a jaunty folk tune – a favorite of my father’s – only to break off abruptly when I realize it’s the same song I was humming in my dream yesterday afternoon. The song Granny Ashpet hummed with me as she fleshed her bridal doeskins.

The same song that has been lingering in my head for weeks, like a copperhead in a mossy shadow:

 _How lovely you are, my darling_  
_How beautiful, my love_  
_Your eyes are like doves_  
_Your teeth are like sheep  
_ _Your mouth is a scarlet ribbon_

Lavinia makes a small sound and looks up from her work, perceiving my distress without me having to say or do anything to indicate it, but I shake my head in reply, not unlike Pollux dismissing foolish questions, and say simply, “Not that one. I’ll pick a different song.”

Stringing the garland takes a leisurely hour, punctuated here and there with sips of the cinnamon tea Peeta brings us, and when it’s finished we all bundle up and trek out to the garden, juggling the yards of red berries between us. The birds are out in full force, thanks to the breakfast Peeta brought them earlier, and more than a few linger, tiny heads cocked to one side, to watch the three strange humans wrapping their dormant tree with fresh fruit.

It’s a breathtaking sight: the sprawling tangle of dark branches that is Peeta’s ancient apple tree, dusted with snow and draped with a garland of precious berries. Ripe fruit, red as rubies, on a slumbering tree. It feels like something from an old tale; something startling and a little magical. A portent of something wonderful, and not merely a tree full of delighted birds by morning.

“Bird cakes?” I ask Peeta. “Or do they have to wait till tomorrow?”

“Now is fine,” he answers, his face downright gleeful at the prospect. “I thought we might tie some here and some in the trees along the edge of the woods. But if you don’t want –”

But by then I’m halfway back to the house, intent on suet cakes shaped like birds and rabbits and pine trees. Peeta’s already threaded them with loops of sturdy red yarn, and the three of us each take a baking sheet out to the backyard and hang their precious contents from low branches, taking care to leave several in the garland-bedecked apple tree.

The bird feast being assembled to eye-catching perfection, I turn for the stable. It’s a little early for lunch still, and I need to check my deerskin and steal a little butcher paper to parcel up Peeta’s muffler and my companion’s pillow, but I’ve barely taken four steps in that direction when Lavinia gives a squawk of dismay and hurtles forward to bar my progress.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her, perplexed. “I’m just going to the workshop –”

She shakes her head firmly, mittened hands held wide to stop me, and Peeta comes alongside her, chuckling as though at some secret joke. “I forgot to mention,” he says. “You’re not under any circumstances to go in the stable today. Pollux’s orders.”

“ _What?_ ” I exclaim. This makes even less sense than Lavinia leaping into my path. “I need to work on my deerskin,” I tell them both. “I need to make sure it’s drying properly, and –”

“Pollux said it’ll be fine till tomorrow,” Peeta assures me, though his eyes are mirthful and a little too _knowing_ for my comfort. “You can take it easy today; stay in the house with us and eat cookies.”

I look from him to Lavinia, who is nodding emphatically, and decide that they’ve both gone mad. The deerskin might be all right without attention till tomorrow, but I absolutely need that butcher paper today. I scowl stubbornly, gearing up for a fight, and decide to use Peeta’s own words against him. “Everything in this house belongs to me, right?” I challenge. “Does that exclude what’s in the stable?”

“No, Katniss,” Peeta says, suddenly serious, cupping my shoulders in his gloved hands. “Everything in this house, this stable, this garden – these _grounds_ , if you want to be precise – belongs entirely to you.”

He pauses a moment, letting this sink in, and I barge on, “Then why–?”

He laughs, all somberness forgotten. “A few things don’t belong to you _yet_ ,” he says meaningfully, tipping his head in the direction of the workshop.

I shake my head, completely at a loss now, and Peeta laughs again, even harder this time. “This will all make sense very soon,” he says. “And I promise: your deerskin and your knives and things – everything will be just fine till tomorrow. But until then, you can’t go in the stable,” he concludes with a note of genuine apology.

“Fine,” I huff. “Then can one of you go in and get me a roll of butcher paper?”

Peeta and Lavinia exchange glances and shrugs, then Peeta walks away, toward the back door that leads to the workshop. I strongly suspect that he left me with silent Lavinia on purpose. Even if she _could_ speak, she wouldn’t divulge whatever it is that’s going on in the stable, and she definitely won’t take out her slate for something as minor as this.

I give her a glare of frustration and she smiles innocently in reply. I decide that she most definitely had sisters back in the Capitol and was quite possibly the exasperating youngest of them.

Peeta returns, a full roll of butcher paper in hand, and exchanges it for my empty baking sheet. “This is what you wanted, right?” he says. It’s his turn to be confused, and I relish the moment. After all, two can play this game of holiday secrets.

“Yes,” I say firmly. “One roll of butcher paper. Are there any other new restrictions I need to know about?”

Peeta looks at Lavinia and they pretend to contemplate this. “Not that come to mind,” he says.

“Good,” I reply, and stride purposefully back to the house, leaving them both behind – and hopefully, as perplexed as I was a minute ago.

I’m not angry, of course; not really. Confusing as this decision of Pollux and Peeta’s may be, I know they mean no harm by it. Pollux may enjoy teasing me at every opportunity, but he knows how much the deerskin means to me and would never compromise its care, let alone for a foolish reason. I just can’t, for the life of me, think why he’d refuse to let me see it, nor can I figure out what Peeta meant about things in this house that belong to me, but not _yet_.

The muffler is easy enough to wrap, and I write Peeta's name across the top, as neatly as I can, with a pen from my desk. The pillow, however, large and soft as it is, presents a bit of challenge, and after several crumpled lengths of butcher paper and plenty of cursing, I tuck it back inside Dad's juniper sweater and slip it under the bed again. My best option is to simply leave the pillow on my companion's side of the bed for them to find tomorrow night. Wrapping it would be a waste of time on both our ends, and I can still use those crumpled sheets of paper for parceling game. 

It’s lunchtime now, or nearly, but before I head downstairs I go to my drawer to pick a stocking to leave out for “Father Christmas” tonight. When Dad was alive, the choice was an easy one, but now I have an array of fine socks to choose from, ranging from short, knobby-woven ones to downy woolen ones that reach above my knees. And among Merchant families, at least, sock length is a clear indicator of one’s New Year’s expectations. It’s why some Merchant kids put out festively trimmed, oversized socks: a stocking must be filled, they reason, and the larger the stocking, the more sweets and toys will go inside.

Peeta will fill my stocking with impossibly generous things; I know this already, but there’s no reason to be greedy about it. So I choose one of the socks I brought from home: a typical Seam sock, gray-green and much mended, worn in years ago by my father. If Dad were alive, this is the sort of stocking I would put on our doorstep, and it will do just as well here.

I bend to pick up one of my school shoes from its home by the fireside, reasoning that if coal will be left in said shoe, the older the better, but I pause before leaving the room, my eyes drawn to the empty nightstand on my companion’s side of the bed. There are only three people living in this house besides myself, and each one of them will put out a shoe and stocking tonight – but that doesn’t seem sufficient, somehow. Doesn’t seem to account for my companion.

I’m not the only person here who knows about my night visitor – if no one else, Lavinia is aware of the stranger who shares my bed – but I wonder if I might be the only one who truly _cares_ for them. I’ve made my companion a New Year’s gift already; why shouldn’t I fill a stocking for them as well? After all, Dad’s sock has a mate. I can go out to the woods after lunch and collect pinecones and other little treasures to fill it; maybe even freeze a few “buttons” of Peeta’s honey, like the crystallized honeycomb-sweets Dad always gave us, and parcel them in a makeshift packet of butcher paper.

I’m halfway to the door with both socks in hand and my shoe in the crook of my elbow when I pause again, this time at thoughts of Peeta. Peeta takes such care to serve everyone else before himself, and maybe he won’t bother with his own shoe and stocking. Of a certain, he won’t put the same degree of thought and care into his own “gifts” as he does the ones for Pollux, Lavinia, and myself.

Resolved, I tuck a sock into each hip pocket and creep across the hallway into Peeta’s bedroom. There’s a pair of heavily scuffed black shoes sitting by the fireplace: his bakery shoes, I realize. The boy who wraps me in furs and deerskin and the warmest, finest clothes still wears his father’s gloves, a worn old stocking cap, and his work shoes from home. Stout, unhandsome things with reinforced toes – the irony of which clenches my heart like a fist.

I deliberately take the right shoe, the one belonging to the foot Peeta lost to the Games. I’ll fill it with fragrant pine chips and leave it outside his bedroom door tonight, along with a stocking which, like my companion’s, I’ll fill with honey-sweets and foraged things. I’m my father’s daughter, after all, and Dad showed me time and again that the woods could be a treasure-trove in any season. They won’t be Merchant-quality treats, of course, but they’ll be heartfelt; chosen or made expressly for the recipients. Not the dregs left over from gifts purchased for others and given half-heartedly to oneself.

I hide the shoe in my hobby room and go down to join Peeta in the kitchen for lunch, but I can barely sit still during the meal and I certainly can’t focus on anything but my new plan. After about five minutes of this Peeta laughs softly, gets up from the table, and goes to the cupboard to get down my lunch pouch. “Just _go_ ,” he tells me with a chuckle as he quickly parcels up the remainder of my meal, pouring the soup into a little crock, wrapping the bread and cheese in waxed paper, even putting my cider – and an extra ladleful from the kettle – into a flask to take along.

“I can’t begin to guess why, but you’re ready to burst,” he says, slipping two iced gingerbread rabbits into the pouch before closing the flap. “Do you need your bow?”

Even though I’ve lived with him for a month now, Peeta’s unexpected displays of utter sweetness never fail to knock the breath from my body. “No,” I reply gratefully, “but a few knives would be good, and my foraging bag.”

“Give me two minutes,” he says, and hurries to the back door. It’s an opportunity I hadn’t expected, and I don’t waste it. I go quickly into the pantry and take two of the honey jars – the robust, fruity amber kind and my favorite, the clear pale gold one that tastes of clover blossoms – and stuff them into my lunch pouch. The heat from my meal will keep them from crystallizing, and I can make honey buttons in the woods, just by pouring droplets of honey on a patch of ice or firm snow and letting the cold solidify them.

I’m in my new coat and boots when Peeta returns, my foraging bag and an assortment of hunting knives in hand. “I wasn’t sure,” he says apologetically. “Will these work?”

I don’t know exactly what I’ll need, so really, his selection is perfect, and I tell him so. “I’ll be back soon,” I promise. “I just need to get a few last things before tomorrow.”

I enter the woods to the sounds of merry birdsong. Clearly, Peeta’s gifts are already much appreciated by his feathered companions, many of whom are clustered about his suet cakes, pecking up greedy beakfuls of fruits and seeds and rich deer fat. _An exchange?_  I ask them silently as I pass. _Will you lead me to woodland treasures to serve as gifts for that sweet boy, and for my other friend?_

I try to look at the woods with my father’s eyes, seeking tools and toys and treats, not merely food and fuel for the fire, and I begin filling the socks straightaway with small findings. Two perfect pinecones here, a blue jay’s bright, barred tail feather there. _Pine needles,_ I think, cutting a branch of the greenest ones I can find. They’re less tender and palatable this time of year, though they'll still make a robust, nourishing tea – and, more to the point, they'll smell _wonderful_. My companion, at least, seems to enjoy the scent, if their reluctance to return the pine needle pillow that I put on their side of the bed weeks ago is any gauge.

 _You smell like winter, Katniss,_ murmurs Peeta’s voice in my head. _Like leather and wool and pine and snow and game. You smell_ amazing _._

I blush a little at the memory. I know Peeta was only trying to make me feel better, concerned as I was about smelling unpleasant after a hunt, but at least he’s willing to pretend to like the smell of pine – and now that I think of it, he burns a lot of pine wood in the house, so he can’t be all that opposed to the scent. He can always just burn his portion of needles if he doesn’t want to keep them.

I hastily drink up the last of my soup and rinse out the crock with some snow, then I pluck the needles from their branch and pack the crock full with them. I’ll divide and wrap the needles in something else when I get back; a scrap of fabric, knotted at the top, to make a little sachet of sorts that the recipients can use however they like.

 _Pine bark,_ I think next, and make precise, eager cuts into the trunk of the tree that gave me its needles. A few strips of the soft inner bark will make a tasty snack, however strange to a Merchant’s palate, and I soak them in cider for a little extra flavor while building a small fire with my needle-stripped branch and the precious matchsticks I always keep in a pocket of my foraging bag.

I split the ends of a couple of branches to improvise toasting forks, and while the aromatic bark strips dry and darken over the flames, I hunker down beside my little fire, clean my soup spoon with snow, and use it to drizzle small dollops of both kinds of honey over the expanse of snow surrounding me. It’s plenty cold today, especially for sitting in the snow, and the honey buttons solidify slowly, turning a cloudy pale gold, as I rotate my pine bark strips, taking care that they toast evenly without burning or catching fire at their tips.

I pronounce both treats done at the same time and bolt down the last of my bread and cheese so I can use its waxed paper wrap for the honey buttons. The pine bark is no longer sticky in the least, so I simply tuck it into a pocket of my foraging bag. I’ll cut it into bite-sized pieces once I get back and make little butcher-paper sacks of it for both Peeta and my companion to enjoy.

My search for a small piece of pine to split into chips for Peeta’s shoe turns up a fallen branch of what might be maple; straight and sturdy, a little thinner than my wrist. I’m not skilled at woodwork in the least, but what comes to mind at the sight of it requires little craftsmanship. I cut the branch down to about a foot in length, then slice away the bark as smoothly as I can and hollow out a shallow bowl on one end with my smallest knife. The result is a crude cooking spoon, but I know Peeta will appreciate it. He perceives even the smallest things I do for him as rare, precious gifts, though I can’t begin to imagine why. I’m happy to help this sweet, generous boy however I can, and what I do is nothing special.

I find more pretty pinecones and feathers as I turn for home, but the true treasure of the day is my very last discovery: a bird’s nest, blown from its tree and resting in the snow like a perfect bowl of twigs and down. It makes me think of my bird dream; of the nest of my bed of furs and deerskin. Of the nest of Peeta’s hands, cupping my small feathered body to his chest.

Of his strong arms and warm, musky skin, so sweet and soft beneath my cheek.

I pick up the nest, blushing hotly, and dust the snow from its base with one gloved hand. This will make a fine gift for my companion. I’ll put it on their nightstand this evening with a few honey buttons inside, and if they don’t take it with them in the morning, I can leave subsequent treats or little gifts there too. _A perfect bowl of twigs and down,_ I think. _Where better to leave presents for the companion who exists only in my bedroom of fur and pine and wild rock?_

I place the nest carefully in my foraging bag and make my way to the back of the stable – not to snoop, of course, but to borrow the axe and chopping block for a few minutes. I don’t have the arm strength to swing the axe properly, but I only need a few quick blows to break my pine branch into chips that will fit inside Peeta’s shoe.

I manage exactly two shallow swings before Peeta comes around the corner of the building, a flask in hand, and I abandon the axe and pine fragments to grab hold of my foraging bag and hide it behind my back. “You can’t be back here!” I sputter, furious at being caught so near to completing my secret errand. “It’s…New Year’s surprises!”

Peeta smiles, a radiant, foolish smile that he has no right to wear when I’m shrieking at him like an angry blue jay. “You mean, this wasn’t all some elaborate scheme to get you into the workshop?” he teases. “Anyway, I saw nothing – except your little red hood coming back through the woods, and I thought you might be getting cold.”

He sets the flask on the chopping block alongside my clumsily cut pieces of pine. “Come in soon,” he urges me with a wink. “Father Christmas doesn’t come till everyone’s in bed, you know.”

It’s just broaching sundown – maybe 4:00 – but his playful warning still tugs at my scowl, threatening to turn it into a smile. I wait till he turns away to pick up the flask and find it filled with his incredible hot chocolate, brightened with a whimsical splash of sweet mint – most likely a peppermint from the sweet-shop, melted into the mix.

This boy will father the pleasantest children imaginable, I decide. Not only will they inherit his sweet nature – and be well-fed beyond imagining – but they’ll find it impossible to get angry at him, even when he’s being exasperating. I wonder if I’ll fill their stockings with pinecones and honey buttons, with colorfully patched sock puppets and stick-dolls with smiling seed-pod faces.

I hide out in my hobby room before supper to finish preparing the stockings for Peeta and my companion. I’d half forgotten that I no longer live with Mom and Prim, and as such, scraps of cloth – such as I need for my pine needle sachets – are in short supply. I could ask Lavinia, I suppose; she’s bound to have something that would serve, but in a strange way, I don’t want her to know about this. Whether it’s pride or embarrassment or something else entirely, I don’t want anyone but me to have a hand in these stockings.

As I contemplate a solution, I realize I already have something that would work for containing the pine needles, though I hesitate for a long moment before retrieving it – or _them_ , rather – from what has slowly become my own drawer of precious things. The family plant book lives there, along with Prim’s letters and the little notes Peeta leaves me on nap days – I feel compelled to save them, though I can’t understand why – my parents’ wedding photo, the spile Peeta gave me on my second night here, still tied with its red ribbon…and my parents’ handkerchiefs. Dad’s is large and red and serviceable; a workingman’s pocket handkerchief, while Mom’s is made of white linen and edged in fine violet lace, with a cluster of beautifully embroidered sweet cicely blossoms in one corner and her initials in an elegant curling script. _A.E._ – from the time when she was Alyssum Ebberfeld, not Alys Everdeen. A Merchant’s daughter, not a miner’s wife.

Precious though they are to me, I have nothing else to present the needles in, so it will have to be the handkerchiefs. I lay them flat on my desk, sprinkle both with a small heap of pine needles – Dad’s, of course, can hold substantially more – then lift the corners and tie them snugly with leftover brown thread from my sewing projects, forming two neat pine bundles.

I debate briefly over which sachet to give to whom. Peeta knows my mother and will recognize the handkerchief as hers, as well as the significance of me giving it away, but if my companion is Lavinia, surely a sachet made of a woman’s handkerchief would be a better gift. Dad’s handkerchief means more to me of the two; do I give it to Peeta, who remembers my father from his visits to the bakery, or do I give it to the silent stranger who shares my covers of deerskin and fur and breathes in pine from my pillows as they sleep beside me?

I think of Peeta handing me his handkerchief on my first morning here, when I cried over the feast he’d prepared and served to me, then I think of yesterday afternoon, when I woke to find myself crying in Peeta’s arms and he gave me his handkerchief to dry my tears. Of the two, it’s Peeta to whom I most owe a handkerchief, and Dad’s is ideal for the purpose. Far better than the scrap of cloth I gave him after the Reaping, when I kissed his cheek and fled because I had no words to thank him – nor begin to repay my debt.

With an air of decision, I tuck the sachet made of Dad’s handkerchief inside the stocking for Peeta and the one made from Mom’s in my companion’s stocking. Whoever they are, man or woman or gentle white bear, they’ll know _A.E._ is not me but someone close to me and appreciate the gift accordingly.

I put the remaining honey buttons in the bird’s nest, not unlike half a dozen creamy golden eggs, then I top off both stockings with an extra pinecone or two, fill Peeta’s shoe with bits of chopped pine branch, and bring everything back to my room to hide in my drawer of precious things till Lavinia leaves me for the night. I’m halfway downstairs when I remember my own stocking for Father Christmas and run back to grab one of my shortest socks and my school shoe, which I forgot in my hobby room this morning after stealing Peeta’s shoe to use in my plan. I leave both on the frosty front porch, feeling ridiculous – they’re the first to arrive and look more than a little silly: a solitary sock and a scuffed-up shoe, sitting at the top of Peeta’s fine stone steps – and go to the kitchen to see if Peeta needs help with supper.

Our meal is as lush and delicious as always – it’s beef tonight, roasted with garlic and mushrooms and so tender I can cut it with the edge of my fork – but I find myself unexpectedly restless and eager to call it a night. Whether to leave out the gifts for Peeta and my companion or to go to sleep and await “Father Christmas,” I hardly know, but Peeta seems to feel it too. “Tomorrow can’t come soon enough,” he laments with a little laugh. “I always feel like this at New Year’s – except, of course, I’ve usually got bakery work to make the time go faster.”

I think of when my father was alive and realize that, back then, I felt much the same. New Year’s Eve was an ordinary day for the most part, with schoolwork and housework and Dad coming home late – later than usual, even, as he made a few last-minute holiday trades in the square or at the Hob. But New Year’s Day was always something to look forward to, even if only for a many-times-reused white ribbon tied around my pigtail and Dad staying home for the entire day, laughing and singing and cooking favorite old dishes that Granny Ashpet made when he was a boy.

Since Dad died, New Year’s has been as hollow as a Seam child’s stocking, left on a sooty doorstep for a fairytale figure who would never arrive. A half-hearted holiday that I’ve tried to maintain for Prim’s sake with little gifts and treats, but this year…this year couldn’t be more different. This morning we sent the Hawthornes more food than any Seam family has ever seen at New Year’s, complete with bread and cookies and snow ice cream. In a good year my family would have “deer sausage” and suet pudding for our holiday meal, but this year Mom and Prim have choice venison and ginger cake with custard for their table, and we’re hanging out suet cakes for wild birds.

And I’m spending New Year’s with the kindest, most generous boy in the world, who refuses to get angry at me, no matter how badly I treat him; who wraps me in his priceless bearskin and dries my foolish tears and finds the idea of me pregnant with fawns a _beautiful_ thing. He painted seven little pictures of me, this impossible boy, simply to show my family how happy I am here, and tonight he means to playact the Father Christmas legend for the sake of his servants: to fill our shoes with coal and our stockings with sweets – and who knows what else?

I owe him so much more than a fur muffler, even if it is the finest gift I’ve ever held in my hands, let alone made with them.

I eat dessert – an apple dumpling as big as my fist – but don’t linger over it, and Peeta doesn’t try to keep me. “I know,” he says with understanding as I get up from the table. “Pajamas at breakfast?”

“Pajamas at breakfast,” I affirm, making him smile, and I pause beside my chair, just for a moment. I know tomorrow is a holiday, with a Mellark family routine and traditions to discover and follow, but –

“Sleep as late as you like,” he says softly. “I can always bring you up a tray.”

I release the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Good night, Peeta,” I whisper.

I get ready for bed quicker than I ever have before, even on the coldest night I can remember back in the Seam, when we only had enough coal to fuel one fireplace and the floors hissed with frost beneath my feet. Lavinia brushes out my hair and helps me into a festive nightgown – soft ivory flannel, patterned with chickadees and pinecones and little red berries – that I suspect Peeta bought for this very occasion, then I all but chase her out of the room. She raises a brow at me as she goes, but it’s the amused version of the expression.

Once she’s gone, I do the usual things to prepare for my companion: carrying the warming pan to their side of the bed, turning back the covers a little, plumping the pillows. I’m on my way to retrieve the bird’s nest from my drawer when there is a quiet knock at the door and I practically jump out of my skin. _My companion doesn’t knock,_ I remind myself. Lavinia must have forgotten something, or have some last question for me before bed.

I open the door to find Peeta there, holding up the sock that I left out on the porch and wearing a frown of mock-consternation. “This isn’t a very optimistic sock, Katniss,” he says sternly. “I know I bought you some that go up to your knees.”

I take the cold, rejected sock from his hand without a word, exchange it for the longest one I can find in my drawer, and bring that back to him, all without so much as cracking a smile. He holds up the replacement sock for a moment, solemnly considering its length, and gives an approving nod. “That’s better,” he says.

I close the distance between us in two quick steps, wrapping my arms around his neck and breathing in the scent of his curls, and his arms encircle my waist, lifting me a little against him. I don’t quite know why I’m hugging him like this, dressed in my nightgown on the threshold of my bedroom, and I don’t care. It’s New Year’s Eve, and he came to demand a longer sock because the one I left out wasn’t sufficient to hold everything that he wants to give me.

I don’t understand what it is, but the way I feel for this boy makes my heart hurt. It’s a strange pain, warm and breathless and swelling, as though the sun itself occupies what used to be my heart and will one day burst its shell of flesh and consume me with golden flames from within. _I care about you,_ I tell him with a wordless moan against his cheek, and he gives a quiet whimper in reply. _I care so much it frightens me a little._ I care too much to call it _caring_ any longer, but I don’t have another word to describe this feeling. 

“I’m so glad you’re here, Katniss,” he murmurs. “That you came to be with me, and that you stayed.” 

“I’m glad too,” I whisper.

Truth be told, I can no longer imagine life without Peeta. In one short month he’s become as essential to my survival as food or air or warmth in winter; as vital as my own heart and lungs. Part of me suspects that if he hadn’t come to my family’s house to make that bargain, I would be dead by now – not from cold or hunger, but from the absence of _him_.

But of course, I tell him none of this. It sounds foolish enough in my head, and as impossibly kind as Peeta is, he couldn’t help but find such a declaration ridiculous.

I reluctantly loose my hold on him and take a small step backward, but his arms linger around my waist, tethering me close. “I know it’s a little late to ask,” he says softly, “but what would you like for New Year’s?”

“Breakfast with you,” I answer without hesitation, and he laughs quietly, shaking his head.

“You’ll get that and so much more,” he assures me. “I meant: for a present.”

I consider this question much as I do when he asks if I want anything from town. I have more of _everything_ than I could ever ask for; _too much,_ as he promised from the beginning. Clothes, food, furs; even fine Capitol soaps that soften and brighten my skin and smooth my hair into a sleek fall of silk.

Where a month ago I had almost nothing – a sooty hovel of a home, bare cupboards, worn-out clothes and a starving family – now there is nothing I _lack_. Nothing I want, nor can think to ask for, from this boy whose greatest wish in all the world is for me to be happy.

There _is_ something, little enough, that would make my New Year’s perfect, and likelier than not, Peeta’s already incorporated it into his holiday plans. But he asked, and so I reply, a little shyly, “I’d like an orange. The only one I’d ever had before coming to live here was a special New Year’s treat from my dad,” I explain. “So, um…it would be nice to have an orange tomorrow.”

Peeta offers me oranges or orange juice often – practically every day – but a New Year’s orange is special, and I know he knows it. “An orange,” he echoes with a sad smile. “A district full of shops and festive presents, and all you want is an orange?”

“Well, not quite,” I admit, my cheeks warming. “I’d like you to share it with me, by the living room fire. Dad and I split that first orange, and…it feels right to do the same with you.”

The sadness fades from Peeta’s smile, supplanted by something that looks ever so slightly like wonder. “It would be my pleasure, Katniss,” he says. “It could be a new tradition, all our own.”

His words evoke a dozen future New Years in this place; bright half-moon sections of a dozen perfect oranges, sunny and ripe and so plump with juice that it trickles between our fingers as we bite. I imagine Peeta’s wife won’t look kindly on such a tradition – her husband pausing in his New Year’s celebration to share a special orange with his huntress – but I don’t see her in this vision. I see only Peeta and me, wrapped in furs and firelight, taking fruit the color of the sun from each other’s hands.

“Yes,” I tell him quietly, my mind full of a dozen New Years to come; a dozen oranges and a dozen fireside embraces. “I’d like that.”

I wait at the door till he disappears down the stairs, then I go to my drawer of precious things and take out the gifts I hid before supper. Strictly speaking, shoes and stockings are meant for New Year’s morning, but Peeta is always in the kitchen before I’m awake, and my companion must rise even earlier. And surely they’ll appreciate a surprise gift at bedtime just as much as one that appears in the morning.

I place Peeta’s shoe and stocking outside his bedroom door and the stocking for my companion outside mine. Then I lay the bird’s nest, with its precious honey-eggs, in the center of my companion’s pillow, and go quietly to bed.

I don’t intend to stay awake, but I’ve worked too much woodland magic tonight, and I can’t fall asleep without at least knowing my gifts have been received. And in any case, it’s nearly impossible for me to sleep before my companion has arrived.

They come, late and very quiet, and give a soft gasp when they reach their side of the bed. I wonder if they like their nest with its eggs of gold and long for a glimpse of their face by firelight, gazing down at my gift, but I know I don’t dare turn and look and instead huddle deeper into my own pillows, squeezing my eyes shut as I keep my back to them. They sit on the bed, as on nights when I leave them a snack, and I strain my ears for the sound of their fingers, swishing against the deerskin pillow as they pick up the nest and bring a honey-sweet to their mouth with a sigh of pleasure.

There are more sounds then, soft pleasant ones, as they empty their stocking of its contents with careful hands and place each item on the nightstand in turn with a chuckle or a sigh. I know when they reach the pine sachet, made from my mother’s precious handkerchief, because they gasp once more – at the initials or the embroidered blossoms or gift itself, I can’t be sure – then breathe deeply, inhaling its sweet, resinous scent.

I don’t know what, if anything, I expected in return, but when their weight lifts off the mattress and they walk around to my side of the bed, I stiffen a little, instinctively – not with fear, of course, but something like anticipation. They’ve only come to my side once before, the night I meant to offer myself to Peeta, and then it was to put away the plant book for me, as I’d fallen asleep holding it to my chest. To cover me with an extra fur, as I’d gone to bed in the flimsiest of nightgowns and they’d felt me shiver with cold. To brush a bit of hair back from my face, their fingers light as a butterfly’s wing against my skin.

I feel fingertips on my cheek, hesitant and careful and so fleeting that I ache, then something settles on my pillow, just beyond where my hand lies, and my companion returns to their side of the room to undress and crawl beneath the covers.

They’ve never left me a gift before. Curious as I am, I don’t open my eyes or move at all till I hear their breath slow and deepen with slumber, and even then I peek between my lashes, half-afraid they’ll know I’m looking.

It’s my turn to gasp.

Everything about my companion: their name, their face, even their gender is a mystery that only deepens with each tender gesture or movement or even sound that they make, but this gift is the most perplexing – most _impossible_ – thing so far. I’m a skilled forager by anyone’s reckoning, and I combed the woods for over an hour this afternoon, seeking all things edible or eye-catching. What lies on my pillow is both; a true midwinter treasure, and one I haven’t seen in this season since my father died.

While easy enough to locate in spring or fall, in winter this plant is buried beneath acres of snow, but Dad could sniff it out of a drift like a hungry dog after the tiniest scrap of food. _It’s like anything of value, catkin,_ he laughed as I grumbled and scowled at my inability to locate even _one_ plant while he turned up cluster after cluster of glossy green leaves and round red berries from seemingly random heaps of deeply drifted snow. _You just need to remember where you left it._

Of course, the woods were as much a part of my father as his own flesh and blood, and the location of its every wonder lay behind his eyes, as clear as a map. I learned a little of his wild-craft before he died, but he had been born in the woods, and in a strange way, the woods saw him as its own child, especially after his parents died, and imparted to him secrets I will never discover, even if I search for a lifetime.

What lies on my pillow is clearly a gift from the woods, but does this mean it’s finally claimed me as its own, like Dad and Granny Ashpet, or is it _my companion_ that the woods loves? The touch on my cheek came from human fingers, but never have I wondered more fiercely whether the stranger in my bed might be the gentle white bear of my dreams, who comes to me in snow and caves and fairytale palaces, and always bearing the unlikeliest of gifts.

Resting on the deerskin at my fingertips, colorful as a kissing bough by firelight, is a sprig of wintergreen, bright with berries.

* * *

I wake, impossibly, to the sound of sleigh bells.

I tell myself it must be Pollux, returning very late – but surely he wouldn’t have stayed in town overnight. He’ll have come home last night, like always, perhaps after I went to bed. I don’t always hear the sleigh, and Pollux would have taken pains to be extra quiet if he was coming in especially late.

The first bright fingers of sunrise are peeping over my windowsill, and I hear the bells again.

I scramble up onto my knees, eager as a child to look out the window and catch a glimpse of snow-white ponies and a magical sleigh that cannot possibly exist, but my hopeful peek is foiled by a sudden series of urgent knocks at my bedroom door. No one ever knocks in this house, let alone in such a panic, and I spring from the bed to find Lavinia outside my door in a nightgown of evergreen flannel, her hair bed-tousled and blazing about her grinning face as she tugs impatiently at my arm.

I don’t know whether it’s the sleigh bells or her unusual appearance or the sheer joy that seems to have risen with the sun this morning, but I laugh delightedly and give her a hug about the shoulders. “Happy New Year to you too,” I say into the fragrant, fiery silk of her hair. “Should we go and see what Father Christmas left us?”

We race each other down the stairs like a pair of children, and I beat her to the front door by an arm’s length. The stone porch is as broad and cold as a frozen lake beneath my bare feet, but I couldn’t care less. At the top of the steps are three shoes, each filled to the brim with precious pieces of coal, and alongside each shoe lies a stocking, packed full as a sausage.

The steps, dusted with snow, are marked with a man’s boot prints, climbing up and going down again, and just beyond the steps, breaking the downy blanket of fresh snow that must have come overnight, are sleigh tracks and the prints of a pony’s hooves, approaching from the lake and departing into the woods.

I’m not sure whether Pollux or Peeta was driving the sleigh, but I strongly suspect the other one came along to sweep away the tracks that led back to the stable. And I imagine I’ll hug the daylights out of both of those foolish, impossibly sweet boys when I find them.

I bend down to pick up my stocking, which is stretched to its knee-high limit and heavy as a brick. I can barely guess at the treasures its soft brown wool contains, but peeping out over the top, like the radiant curve of the sun itself, is the bright round face of a perfect orange.

My very own New Year’s orange; the second one I’ve received in sixteen years. The only gift I asked for, tucked into the top of my stocking, so it would be the very first thing I see on New Year’s Day. My eyes prickle at the corners, warning of tears to come, and I tell them sternly that it’s only the cold of the morning. I absolutely _can’t_ break down at every little gift and gesture from Peeta, or I’ll never get through this day.

Shivering beside me with an armful of her own shoe and stocking, Lavinia picks up my shoe and presses it into my free hand, then tugs me by my sleeve back into the house. Burdened with gifts, we hurry to the kitchen for our promised breakfast. The house is heady with the scents of sausages and sticky buns and griddle cakes, and my stomach growls in anticipation, but the table – the entire kitchen – is empty. There is no Peeta, no food; only enormous kettles of cider and spiced wine, simmering quietly at the back of the stove, as they have been for nearly a week now.

“Well, are you coming?” calls Peeta’s merry voice from the direction of the dining room, and Lavinia and I race back out of the kitchen, practically colliding in the doorway as we follow the scents of a feast to their source.

Even if I had a hundred years to dream, I could never have imagined the sight that awaits us in the dining room. Both the table and sideboard are _filled_ with food; so much food – surely, more food than the four of us could consume in a _lifetime_ – that there is no place for anyone to sit and eat. Heaps of crisp-fried bacon, thick slices of ham, and several kinds of sausages. A platter full of soft-fried eggs, another of poached, and a third scrambled with herbs. Griddle cakes, the deep molasses-brown of gingerbread; some iced in breathtaking snowflake patterns and others left plain, with a pitcher of custard to pour over them. Even _more_ griddle cakes with festive bits of peppermints and chocolate sprinkling their fluffy golden faces, and still others flecked with spices and redolent with cider.

There are sticky buns, fat as flour sacks and glistening with golden caramel, and cheese buns, still steaming from the oven. There are loaves of _four_ different kinds of bread, surrounded on all sides by pots of jam and preserves and goat cheese and honey butter, and bubbling skillets of spiced apples and peaches with bottles of cream to splash over them. There are pitchers of orange juice, milk, and cider as well as stovepots – _three_ glorious stovepots, one of which must contain cream-coffee, another hot chocolate, and the third tea of some kind.

And standing in front of the fireplace is the boy responsible for all of this, dressed as promised in a gray thermal undershirt and trousers of red plaid flannel. Peeta’s clearly been cooking and baking for _hours_ , but his hair is still mussed as though he only just climbed out of bed, and he’s smiling at me as though he’s just seen the sun rise for the first time.

“Happy New Year, Katniss,” he says.

I dump my shoe and stocking onto the first chair to hand, but his arms are around me before I can take another step. “Happy New Year, Peeta,” I whisper, curling my arms snugly across the strong planes of his back.

He hasn’t showered this morning, and the natural muskiness of his body, distinct even over the delicious scents of all the foods he prepared, is startlingly pleasant. It astonishes me, how much I like it; how badly I want to breathe in till it fills my lungs, even part my lips and drink it in, like hot cider or spiced wine. How badly I wish I were tucked beneath deerskin and furs and could turn over into that scent – and these arms.

 _Home,_ I think, pressing myself so close that my breastbone is flush against his. _This table spread with food and this sweet boy, rumpled and warm from his bed._

“Thank you for the stocking,” he murmurs against my cheekbone, pulling me closer still, and I smell honey on his breath. Sweet clover honey, snow-chilled into creamy golden buttons, and toasted pine bark soaked in cider.

“What stocking?” I wonder innocently, even as my cheeks warm and my heart swells. “It’s Father Christmas who fills the stockings, Peeta; not me.”

“I didn’t know Father Christmas brought treats made of honey and pine bark,” he says, his mouth curving against my skin. “Or filled shoes with bits of pine for the fire.”

“He does in the Seam,” I answer, my lips turning up in an answering smile.

Lavinia clears her throat with what sounds like amused impatience and I reluctantly draw back from Peeta, letting my hands linger a moment longer at his waist to savor the heat of his skin through the texture of his thermal shirt. “So: food,” I say, glancing over at the table. “I see chairs, but no place for a person to sit and eat. Is this another Mellark tradition?” I tease. “No plates or cups or forks; everyone just digs in?”

He laughs; a rich, blissful, effortless sound. A laugh so full of joy, it makes me wonder whether I’ve ever truly seen him happy before. “No,” he assures me. “The tradition is the big breakfast, to be eaten while wearing pajamas. I went a little overboard, so I thought we might take our plates and eat around the fire in the living room.”

At this moment, I can’t think of a better way to start the New Year.

There’s a vigorous stamping of boots from the mudroom and a rustle of a parka being removed and hung up, and then Pollux appears in the doorway, his cheeks pink with cold above his beard. He’s dressed in flannel and thermals like Peeta, and his thick sandy hair – usually hidden beneath a stocking cap – sticks out in every direction.

He’s clearly the source of the sleigh bells that woke me this morning – and the one who brought precious New Year’s gifts to my family and the Hawthornes – and I blindside him with a quick, fierce hug. “Happy New Year, Father Christmas,” I whisper against his shoulder, only half in jest. He smells of woodsmoke and snow and the musk-hay-and-dung scent of little Rye, and his face is flushed – but pleased – when I pull away.

In a strange way, this is my family now. This burly, bearded man who loves to tease, even without words; this stunning red-haired woman with patient, skillful hands and eyes full of secrets – and Peeta Mellark. Victor, painter, baker’s son; a boy who could have had anything and everything he wanted, and yet he chose to take a house in the woods and share his riches with two Avoxes and a fatherless Seam girl.

I should be homesick this morning; should be lonely for Prim and Mom and maybe even Dad, as he appears in my memories of New Years past. But I’m not. What I have in this moment, I want forever. Peeta and cozy feasts and our silent companions, sharing this fairytale house in the woods.

Peeta produces four large trays from a drawer in the sideboard, along with dishes for each of us, and we set to filling them with growling stomachs and wide, eager eyes. “Take as much as you want,” he urges us as he cuts a slice of bread – my favorite, made with cranberries and a swirl of brown sugar and nutmeg – and spreads it with goat cheese, then lays it on my tray with a shy smile. “And come back for more. There’s to be no working today, so we can sit and eat breakfast all morning long if we want.”

I nip a piece of bacon from my tray – it’s too crisp and golden-brown and _perfect_ to wait another moment – and crumble it eagerly on my tongue as I follow Lavinia to the living room, my arms full with a miniature feast all my own. I spy a roaring fire within and parcels strewn about its hearth; the sort of New Year’s morning Seam kids can only dream of, and Lavinia’s about to walk through the doorway when I catch at her nightgown with a frantic hand and a little cry of distress, pulling her backward.

“There’s a kissing bough,” I tell her urgently, motioning upward with one shoulder.

Hanging in the doorway that leads to the living room is a flawless, fragrant pine bough, thick with needles and bearing two long satin ribbons, one red and one white. I wonder vaguely why a boy with Peeta’s money would decorate his kissing bough with just two ribbons when he could easily afford an entire ribbon _stall_ , and then I remember what this is and what it’s for. My mind fills with boorish Merchant boys and coy Merchant girls, ducking and dodging in a dance of back doorsteps and sales counters and shrieks of laughter, cut off by another’s lips, and I feel a little sick inside. No one’s ever tried to kiss me, _ever_ – except Darius, the redheaded Peacekeeper, who tried to bargain me into a kiss on a summer’s day without waiting for the excuse of a kissing bough – and I’ve made very sure they never had the opportunity. Today will be no different.

“If you walk under it, you owe a kiss to whoever’s on the other side,” I explain. Lavinia’s probably never heard of or seen a kissing bough before, but I’m certain she’ll understand the danger in opening oneself freely to strangers’ kisses.

Except the living room is empty. Lavinia peers inside, then back at me with a meaningful, owlish blink.

“I know no one’s in there _now_ ,” I say patiently, “but –”

But I don’t get to finish my sentence, because she maneuvers swiftly to push me into the room ahead of her and then comes in after me, pressing a sound kiss to my cheek as she passes. She shrugs as though this was this was the simplest solution in the world and settles into one of the armchairs with her breakfast tray, looking very pleased with herself.

“It’s just tradition, Katniss,” Peeta says as he and Pollux come through the doorway in turn. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they both look a little wounded. “Everybody hangs a kissing bough, even if they don’t put out shoes and stockings.”

He’s right, of course. Rich and poor alike hang kissing boughs in their homes, and that’s where we are, after all. _Home._ Not a shop, with devious workers to scheme away kisses from unwary passersby.

The kissing bough in my family’s home made me happy. It meant tender kisses from my parents and lingering kisses between them, even a playful childish peck on my cheek from Prim every now and again. And the three people who share this house with me are as good as family, really. None of us is a lusty Merchant boy or sly Merchant girl, and no one’s going to leap at me, all grasping hands and pursed lips, and cover my face with greedy, unwelcome kisses. So why should it be unsettling to see a kissing bough here?

I look at Peeta and blush hotly, though I don’t know why. He certainly has no interest in kissing me, with or without a New Year’s bough, though I suppose he might mean to kiss Lavinia. And Pollux surely isn’t in search of kisses, here or anywhere else. Peeta’s right – it’s just tradition. Everyone hangs a kissing bough. It’s just what people in Twelve do at New Year’s.

“Are you upset?” Peeta asks. “I didn’t mean…it’s just tradition,” he says again, quietly.

His face is all apology now, maybe even a little sad, and I hurry to reassure him. I refuse to ruin this perfect day just because of my gut reaction to a silly tradition. “No,” I say. “I was just…I avoid kissing boughs, except at home.”

His face breaks into a glorious smile. “Then it’s handy you’re at home,” he replies, but there’s a lilt of a question at the end.

“I’m home,” I answer softly, and I see Pollux and Lavinia exchange a glance, though I’m not quick enough, or adept at their facial cues, to interpret it.

Pollux takes the other armchair and Peeta and I end up on the sofa, as we do so often at lunchtime. As I fill my mouth with bite after bite of spicy gingerbread griddle cakes – topped with both custard _and_ an icing snowflake – my eyes drift to the hearth and the impossible array of parcels scattered there.

Families with a little extra money – Merchants, mostly – will make or purchase gifts for each other, in addition to the ones they put in stockings, and exchange them in front of the fire on New Year’s Day. It’s another tradition that stems back to Father Christmas legends. A very, _very_ old tale from Grandpa Asa’s side of the family says that Father Christmas would throw parcels of food and coal and even warm clothing down the chimneys of the very poor, as their hearths were cold on New Year’s Eve, and they would wake in delight to build a fire and enjoy a meal with their family.

To my knowledge, _no one_ gets unexpected, lifesaving parcels down their chimneys anymore, let alone the poorest families, but the tradition of fireside presents on New Year’s Day stuck around nonetheless. Even in my family’s home, where gifts were as rare as gold, Dad always made sure there was _something_ beside the hearth on New Year’s morning for Prim and me to discover and enjoy, even if it was just a pile of good firewood or a small loaf of soft bakery bread.

I remind myself to bring down Peeta’s muffler after breakfast to add to the pile of parcels. I wasn’t sure how I was going to present it to him, and it’s still upstairs, tucked away in my drawer of precious things. Maybe if I bring it in while no one’s looking, I can sneak it among the gifts and draw less attention to it, and myself. 

“Mellarks open gifts after supper on New Year’s,” Peeta says, clearly following the direction of my gaze. “It adds to the suspense, because you have all day to snoop around the packages, lifting and squeezing and shaking them. But if you want to open them sooner, we certainly can,” he adds. “Most of them are for you anyway.”

I look up at him in surprise. “For _me_?” I puzzle. Even when my father was alive, it was rare for there to be a special New Year’s present at the hearthside just for me.

Peeta laughs lightly. “You’re more beloved than you realize,” he says, gesturing at the parcels with his fork. “See for yourself, if you want.”

Too curious to resist, I set my tray on the low table and crouch down beside the sea of hearthside parcels…almost _all_ of which are addressed to _me_. There are a couple labeled for Peeta, Pollux, and Lavinia, and a few others for “Peeta and family,” but everything else is _Katniss_ , even the gaily striped box that clearly came from the sweet-shop. One large, soft parcel bears my mother’s handwriting on its brown paper wrap and another, small and square, bears Prim’s.

“My family sent me presents?” I whisper.

“So did mine,” Peeta says with a crooked smile. “I told you: you’re more beloved than you realize.”

I climb back onto the sofa, slightly dazed by this revelation, and resume my breakfast in a distracted fashion. I’ve always known better than to expect gifts at holiday-time or any other, even when Dad was alive and could now and again afford little treats for his girls, but now that I’m living in luxury with Peeta, _everyone_ seems to be giving me presents.

Neither Peeta nor I talk much as we eat. There’s so much food and it’s all so rich and knee-weakeningly delicious that our mouths are preoccupied with enjoying every last bite. I glance around at Pollux and Lavinia, curious how they’re approaching a feast that they can’t taste, and find them both taking many enthusiastic but careful bites.

Lavinia catches my eye and gestures at her plate; a swirl of her slim fingers, like smoke rising, then she motions at her nose. _Smell,_ I guess. Their sense of smell is probably heightened in light of their absence of taste, and the scent of food is easily half of its flavor.

“They ate little better than pig-swill in the Capitol,” Peeta murmurs, leaning toward me so Pollux and Lavinia won’t hear. “Avoxes can’t taste, so Capitol folk reasoned: why bother giving them anything that tastes good?”

I look up at Lavinia again, who either heard what Peeta said or guessed at it, and she nods gravely. She points to Peeta then rests that hand on her heart, and Pollux imitates the gesture. They’ve both used the hand-heart gesture in several different contexts, always related to Peeta, but the meaning here is so obvious it makes my eyes burn.

“I think _you_ might be more beloved than you realize,” I tell Peeta quietly.

He gives a sad little laugh and leans close to reply, “The first message Lavinia ever wrote to me on her slate was _I love you._ She’d been here for just over two months, communicating only in gestures. She kept thinking a hovercraft was going to come and take them back to the Capitol again, to be slaves or worse…I think she was afraid to believe that this was her life now,” he says, barely whispering the words. “I did everything I could to reassure her, and one afternoon I brought a tray of lunch up to her room and she just sort of blurted it – with chalk, of course.”

I tip my head a little to look into his eyes. No sixteen-year-old boy’s eyes should be so full of compassion and tenderness, let alone this one, who loves so much – his Avoxes, his birds, his girl – and receives so little in return. Peeta deserves to be treated the way he treats me: to be wrapped in furs and fed exquisite food; to be cradled and comforted and have his feet kissed like treasures – even the prosthetic one.

Especially _the prosthetic one,_ I resolve _, and every remaining inch of his right leg._

“And Pollux?” I ask lightly.

He laughs again, warmly this time. “I was still a little hazy from the surgery,” he says, “but I think Pollux first told me he loved me when I asked if he’d be willing to move out here.”

“Okay,” I concede with a grin, entirely unsurprised at such behavior from friendly, effusive Pollux. “Maybe you _do_ know how loved you are.”

Instead of brightening, as I expect, his smile falters a little. “I think I do,” he says. There’s no self-pity in his voice, just a somber sort of acceptance, and it’s one of the saddest sounds I’ve ever heard. 

I set a hand on his and give it a quick squeeze, oddly desperate to cheer him. “You never know,” I say. “You haven’t opened your presents yet.”

The effect this has on him is instantaneous and a little startling. He sits bolt upright, eyes wide in disbelief. “You didn’t…” he whispers, shaking his head a little.

“Didn’t what?” I puzzle.

I have no idea what he was about to ask, but this is clearly the wrong answer. Peeta settles back onto his cushion again, deflated; his face not so much sad as subdued. “Never mind,” he says, without bitterness. “I, um…I was thinking of something else.”

We clear our plates without further conversation, then Peeta offers to go to the kitchen and bring us all seconds. “It’s no trouble,” he assures us. “And you’re all so comfortable; I’m happy to do it.”

Lavinia makes an indignant sound and points at the doorway, making him laugh. Clearly, it took her very little time to sort out the nuances of the kissing bough. In theory, if Peeta makes multiple trips between the living room and the kitchen, he – or one of us – could claim another kiss each time he walked through the door. “No,” he promises with a chuckle as he bends to take her plate. “I’m not doing it in the hope of extra kisses.”

His eyes flicker to me for a split second and a hot flush suffuses my cheeks and throat once more – and again, I don’t understand it. I know better than to think Peeta wants to kiss _me_ , even as part of a silly New Year’s tradition. That he’d even consider it is ludicrous. He’s madly in love with some beautiful, popular, oblivious girl to whom I sent venison yesterday, via his family.

And of course, _I_ certainly don’t want to kiss _him_.

Peeta collects my plate and Pollux’s and leaves for the kitchen. The moment he’s out the door, Lavinia gives me a square, _speaking_ sort of look, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. “What?” I ask her.

She tips her head toward the pile of parcels and I remember that she knows about the muffler. “Not yet,” I say. “I wasn’t sure. I’ll bring it down later.”

Judging by her face, this is not the answer she was looking for, though it appears to have thoroughly perplexed Pollux, which is an unexpected delight. She doesn’t persist, though, and when Peeta comes through the doorway a few minutes later, I quickly avert my eyes, focusing on the last sips of hot chocolate at the bottom of my battered little mug.

It’s something about seeing him under a kissing bough. The bakery had one hanging up in the middle of the shop, like at Mom and Prim’s, and another at the back door, where I presume all the baker’s sons claimed their fill of kisses from pert, pretty lips, but I can’t recall ever seeing Peeta beneath either bough, let alone kissing anyone. _Ever._

It shouldn’t be so surprising, really. After all, he’s loved this girl of his – if his interview with Caesar is to be believed – for as long as he can remember, and unlikely as it is for a good-looking Merchant boy, maybe he’s been saving his kisses for her rather than snapping them up at every opportunity, from every pair of lips.

It’s unlikely – no, _impossible_ – but for the first time ever, I wonder if Peeta might have told his district partner the truth about their kiss being his first.

 _Who were you saving it for?_ whispers Larkspur Collins in my mind, her voice full of wonder even as the life drains from her body. Would Peeta have lied to a dying child? A thirteen-year-old girl who wanted nothing more from life than a kiss and a toasting, both of which he gave her?

He gave her a name, too; the name of his sweetheart, and whatever it was, it had a powerful reaction on the dying girl. Her hands grasped the front of his jacket with the last ounce of strength in her body. _You have to be the one, Peeta,_ she said, even shaking him a little for emphasis. _You_ have _to go home_. _Go home…a-and love her…_

Peeta’s clearly dedicated himself to loving his girl, however oblivious she may be to it. Does that mean saving his kisses for her too? In which case, I have absolutely nothing to fear from his kissing bough.

I think of the parcel of venison, complete with a fine slab of ribs, that I wrapped up and labeled for _Peeta’s Sweetheart_ and wonder if she’s opening it right now. If her mother is rubbing the meat with handfuls of costly herbs for their feast this evening, or if they’ve been invited to the bakery for supper, since Mellarks exchange New Year’s gifts in the evening.

If she’ll finally realize Peeta’s intentions because of my willful scribbles across the top of her parcel.

I cut a savage bite of cider griddle cake from the plate Peeta brought back for me and choke a little as it goes down.

“You okay?” Peeta asks. He holds out a mug of cream-coffee with an enticing golden cast to it. “I added a few spoonfuls of sticky bun sauce,” he says. “I thought you might like it.”

I take the handle gratefully and wash down the bite of griddle cake with a long sip of the sweet, buttery brew. “Thanks,” I croak.

I remind myself that whoever this sweetheart is, she’s not sitting by Peeta’s living room fire on New Year’s morning, eating his griddle cakes and sipping sticky bun cream-coffee that he prepared just for her. And I resolve to have at least one more New Year’s exactly like this one before she moves in with her blonde braids and delicate Merchant tastes and takes my place on the sofa and at the table.

About halfway through our second round of breakfast, Peeta leaves again and returns with an armful of everyone’s shoes and stockings – or rather, everyone’s but his. “These you can have anytime,” he says, laying my plump sausage of a stocking alongside my plate. “You can start on them now or save them for later.”

Lavinia makes an enquiring sound and points out the absence of a shoe and stocking for Peeta, and his cheeks go faintly pink. “I, um, snooped into mine earlier,” he confesses, and I feel his eyes on me as I stare pointedly at my plate. “But I can go get it if you want, so we can all have them at once.”

He runs upstairs for a minute and returns with a face as hot and bright as a Merchant child’s sunburn, albeit almost deliriously happy. He takes his seat beside me again, this time with a lapful of my father’s sock, packed full of woodland things, and his own work shoe, heaped with bits of pine branch.

“This is the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever done for me, Katniss,” he murmurs, and I look up at him with flames in my own cheeks. “I mean it,” he says, and his fingers inch across the sofa cushion to brush my hand. “It’s…I had no idea this was why you went out to the woods yesterday. It’s _perfect_ , all of it. The cooking spoon and honey sweets and pinecones and the toasted bark. I haven’t had pine bark since –”

“Oh!” I cry, recalling it in an instant, and I wonder how I could have been so stupid. Peeta ate pine bark in the arena; lived on it, really, along with a soup of pine needles, spices, and snow, and I had the nerve to give him toasted bark chips as a New Year’s treat. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I was trying to think of foraged things to put in your stocking, like Dad used to do for us, and I’ve eaten a lot of pine bark. I didn’t mean –”

My words break off as his hand turns mine palm up and curls around it. “I _love_ it,” he says, emphasizing the words with a little squeeze of my hand, and I wonder how he can be so unbelievably nice about this when I’ve given him something that must have triggered horrible memories of fear and hunger and pain. “I never minded eating pine bark in the…back then,” he says. “It made me think of you, so getting pine bark _from_ you was…well, perfect, really – and you even flavored it with cider.”

I stare at him, my mortification replaced by a cold, clearing burst of sheer confusion. _I never minded eating pine bark. It made me think of you._ “You thought about me in the arena?” I say.

This makes no sense whatsoever. Peeta and I weren’t friends back then. We were barely even acquaintances, and whatever he’s said about apples and apple trees reminding him of me, or of wanting to take care of me ever since the day he saved my life with burned bread, he had much more important things than Katniss Everdeen to occupy his thoughts in the arena.

He stares back at me for a long moment, and something in his eyes makes my throat flush with a strange heat that has nothing to do with embarrassment or shame. Then his gaze shifts to our joined hands in a tangled flicker of gold, and he whispers, so quietly that I’m half-convinced I imagined it: “ _All the time._ ”

I remind myself that this is clearly one of his kind lies, but I’m not quick enough to prevent the skip in my heartbeat. _He means survival things,_ I tell myself. If Peeta thought about me at all in the arena, which is unlikely, it would have been in relation to things like hunting and foraging. In which case: maybe eating pine bark _did_ remind him of me, in a practical sort of way.

“Now _this_ ,” he says, a little hoarsely, as he turns back to his stocking and takes out the pine bundle that I made from my father’s handkerchief. “This, I suspect, might be one of the most precious things that you own. I know what you carry for handkerchiefs, and…a-and…” He turns the sachet over and over in his hands, as though searching it for his next words. “I know this was your dad’s,” he says finally, raising his eyes to mine. “I know how much it must mean to you, and…I know you wouldn’t just give it away.”

He’s right – painfully right – on all counts, and I have no words to reply.

“I can’t begin to thank you for all – for _any_ of this,” he says, and one of his hands settles on the scuffed shoe on his lap. The shoe I chose because of everything it represented – his lost leg, his life at the bakery, the frugality he practices in his own routines while showering the rest of us with fine new things – and I see in his eyes that he knows. “It’s the most incredible gift I’ve ever received,” he says, and he takes both of my hands in his and brings them to his lips. “I’ll cherish every bit of it,” he promises, each word a little kiss against my fingers.

“It’s nothing special,” I whisper. “Hardly worth cherishing.” But still a warmth blooms in my chest, like a golden rose spreading its petals to catch every last drop of gratitude and affection beaming down from Peeta’s face.

I’m a little wary of looking in my own stocking, knowing only too well that whatever lavish treats Peeta gave me will make my odd assortment of pinecones and foraged foods look even more feeble and worthless in comparison, but he encourages me – and Pollux and Lavinia – to do so with an almost childish insistence. He’s playing his role to perfection this morning. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he has no idea what’s in the stockings and is just as eager as the three of us to see their contents.

My orange, of course, is at the top of my stocking, and I take it out carefully to set on the table between Peeta’s plate and my own. “For later?” I ask, and he confirms it with a nod and a shy smile.

Beneath the orange is a seemingly endless array of costly sweet-shop candies: creamy peppermints, roasted chestnuts, and golden toffee buttons. Beautiful ribbon candy, curling back upon itself again and again in glossy, colorful folds, and gumdrops too, spicy and vibrant and shimmering with sugar. Gumdrops were Dad’s favorite sweet, on those rare occasions when we had a few extra pennies for the spending, and they made his breath smell wonderfully of licorice and cinnamon and mint. I bring a purple one to my mouth in disbelief and try not to tear up as the flavor of sugared anise bursts across my tongue.

I’ve enjoyed very few sweet-shop candies in my life, even at holiday-time, and Peeta has lavished me with enough of them in one morning to make even a spoiled Merchant child blush. “These are _perfect_ , Peeta,” I whisper, cupping a handful of the brightly colored sweets filling my lap. “I never…thank you so much.”

“I had nothing to do with it, you know,” he teases gently, though his eyes are sad, as they are so often when I see or taste something wonderful for the first time. “But I’ll fill every last stocking in your drawer with gumdrops and peppermints if it means seeing you this happy every morning.”

There’s one thing left in my stocking; something heavy and hard to the touch, and I slip a hand down to the toe to retrieve it. My fingers identify it at once as a jam jar, and I fish it out to find it filled with applesauce, with a red satin ribbon tied around its neck and a cluster of katniss flowers painted on its lid.

Peeta gives me some form of apples every day, sometimes at every meal, but like my New Year’s orange, this is special. I know without asking that the contents of this pretty jar came from Peeta’s apple tree; from the precious wild apples he was so determined to preserve, so he could share them with me.

 _Apples have always reminded me of you,_ he said. _If you hadn’t come to live with me, I would have sent you jars of applesauce for New Year’s._

“A jar of applesauce for New Year’s,” I echo, and Peeta smiles.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” he replies.

Pollux and Lavinia have both emptied their stockings as well and are perusing the contents with open curiosity. Peeta gave them more cookies than candy, which makes sense in light of their missing tongues. Sweets are meant to melt on your tongue and fill your mouth with flavor, and Pollux and Lavinia are no longer physically capable of such a pleasure. But they seem to have found a way around it, not unlike Pollux’s strong coffee: as I watch, Lavinia drops two peppermints into her tea, stirs it well, and breathes deeply of the resulting steam before taking a long sip.

Peeta offers us thirds of his breakfast feast, but after two towering platefuls, three brimming mugs, and a handful of gumdrops, I’m not sure my stomach will ever have room for food again. I tell him this, which Pollux and Lavinia affirm with emphatic nods, and he gives a delighted laugh. “Right on schedule,” he says. “Back home, when we’re all so full with New Year’s breakfast that we can’t eat another bite, we bundle up and make our way around the square, visiting friends and neighbors and dropping off little gifts of food.”

I can't deny that going outside sounds like an ideal way to shake up my system after such a rich meal, but we're nowhere near any other homes or families out here, and somehow I know Peeta doesn't mean for us to go into town. “We gave the birds their treats yesterday,” I remind him. “What other neighbors did you have in mind?”

He grins. “Wait and see,” he tells us. “Go change into warm clothes, and we’ll all head out in a few minutes.”

Of course, none of us have any intention of leaving Peeta to finish the breakfast clean-up on his own, and though he insists that he can manage by himself, he’s clearly pleased by our offer of assistance and doesn’t protest as we help him clear the dining room, parcel up the food we didn’t eat, and wash the dishes. Afterward Lavinia and I run upstairs to exchange our nightgowns for thermals and sweaters and corduroy trousers then we meet Peeta back in the mudroom as we all don scarves and coats and boots.

Peeta’s in his bearskin as always, and as I’ve done ever since the morning of my ski lesson, I hand him one of Dad’s scarves to wrap his neck. _After tonight he’ll have a nice thick muffler to keep him warm,_ I remind myself, and smile at the thought.

Pollux is absent from our group, presumably changing back in his loft, and I’m not surprised when Peeta leads us out to the stable. He’s carrying a hamper that I spied beside the icebox earlier, and I imagine he’s bringing it for Pollux himself, as the only “neighbor” of any sort that we have out here.

But as we walk into the stable, where a bundled Pollux awaits us with a grin, I discover what Peeta meant with a little laugh of surprise. The front of Rye’s stall has been framed with evergreen branches, and hanging above the stall door – directly above the pony’s long white face – is a kissing bough, exactly like the one in the house, with one red ribbon and one white wound among the needles.

Lavinia gives a merry laugh of her own and skips forward to lean over the stall door and press a sound kiss to Rye’s broad brown cheek. “That explains the red ribbon,” I tell the pony as I come alongside Lavinia to stroke his strong neck with a gloved hand. “You’ve clearly got a sweetheart.”

I’ve grown attached to this stocky pony, more so than I ever was to Buttercup or even Lady. Rye brought Peeta to town the night he came to make our bargain, and he carried me here the very next day, to the place that I now call _home_. He brings firewood and kissing boughs and New Year’s baskets to our families and friends and returns with food and clothing and letters from my sister. Without Rye, it would be impossible for us to live out here, or at least, to live in the manner we do, with fresh fruit and cream and butcher meat on the table almost every day.

And if I’m entirely honest, Rye is good company. He’s not unlike Pollux, really: quiet, friendly, playful. He turns toward my hand where it lingers against his neck, hoping for a treat, and I’m unsurprised to feel Peeta come up behind me and slip a piece of carrot beneath my palm. Peeta adores his pony and takes a particular delight in making me interact with him, and I turn my hand palm-up, letting Rye lip up the treat with a happy whuffle.

A month ago I looked at Rye for the first time and saw fresh meat for starving Seam folk. Today I see him as part of the household, no less than Pollux and Lavinia, and the idea of eating horse meat is as upsetting to me as shooting a pregnant doe.

Not to mention, Rye appears frequently in my visions of a future in this place. A future filled with curly-haired children, climbing all over the long-suffering pony and plaiting ribbons into his mane – and likelier than not, considering their father, feeding him his weight in sugar cubes.

I stand on tiptoe and press a kiss to Rye’s face, just beneath one large liquid eye, and he blinks placidly in response, as though what I did was a pleasurable thing. “ _Two_ sweethearts,” Peeta murmurs, and I look over my shoulder to see him watching me with eyes so full of longing that it almost seems painful. I imagine he must be missing his own sweetheart desperately today, especially when even Rye is receiving New Year’s kisses beneath a beribboned bough.

Peeta’s hamper, we discover, is filled with a packed lunch for the four of us to share later – and plenty of carrots and apples and sugar cubes for Rye. “I thought,” Peeta says, “since no one has any work to do today, and the four of us are all together, well…I thought we might play in the snow for a little.” He blushes deeply at the words and barrels on, “It’s what they used to do in all the old tales Grandma Lydda told us, back when snow was deep and white and free of coal dust. Making snowmen, throwing snowballs, skating or skiing – to which end,” he adds with a brilliant smile, “I have some early presents for all of you.”

He dips back to the workshop – the door to which is closed for the first time ever in my experience – and emerges a moment later with two pairs of skates and a pair of skis with poles. The skates are twins to my own: curling silver blades beneath foot-shaped platforms with sturdy straps at the toe and ankle, but the skis are a little shorter than Peeta's and strikingly beautiful. Sleek and shiny with lacquer, the runners are red as ripe currants with clusters of painted white katniss blossoms framing the foot straps.

This ridiculous boy has bought me my very own skis, and like the sleigh and the bathtub and my fine fur-lined coat – like the shortbread he packs for my lunch and my jar of New Year’s applesauce and the notes he leaves me when he naps – he’s covered them with my namesake.

Peeta’s offered to get me skis on more than one occasion, and I always replied that I didn’t need them. Not because I didn’t enjoy skiing or don’t want to try it again: I liked sharing _his_ skis entirely too much. Having him in my arms, then being in his, held close to his body and wrapped in his bearskin. Skiing on my own would be fun, I imagine, much like skating on snow, but it would lack the delicious intimacy of following another’s movements with close-pressed limbs while sharing your coverings and body heat.

“You bought me skis,” I say, and realize in those words how very much I’ve changed in the past month. I would never before have assumed a costly gift was for me, even if it had my name – or namesake – all over it.

Peeta gives me an apologetic smile. “I know you said you didn’t need them, but I thought they might be nice to have, just in case,” he says. “If you don’t like them – or want them –”

“No,” I assure him, my face warming, “they’re beautiful and I love them. I just…maybe we could go out once more on _your_ skis?” I ask in a rush, and Peeta’s smile spills out from his lips to flood every corner of his face with a joyful radiance.

“I’d like that, Katniss,” he says. “We can ski together anytime you want.”

I try not to look too elated. I know he’s just being nice – clearly, he can’t have enjoyed sharing the skis as much as I did – but I’m feeling a little spoiled right now. My own skis: handsome, katniss-bedecked skis that my father would have wept over, and the opportunity to share Peeta’s skis again – and again.

I stroke one sleek runner admiringly, tracing each painted blossom in turn, as Peeta cheerfully presents the pairs of skates to Pollux and Lavinia. “I keep saying you can spend time outside whenever you like,” he laughs. “Well, now you have no excuse. Skates for the both of you, and you’re welcome to use my skis anytime you want.”

“And mine,” I chime in, thinking Lavinia might prefer the shorter runners.

Pollux accepts his skates with a grin and wiggles his eyebrows at me – I anticipate skate-races and snowball fights on the lake in the very near future – and Lavinia hugs hers to her chest, as though they’re an especially precious thing, and closes her eyes for a long moment. I wonder if, like me, she’s never owned skates before – or if she skated long ago, as a resident of the Capitol, and lost that privilege along with her freedom and her tongue.

“What about you?” I ask Peeta, frowning as the realization dawns. “Where are _your_ skates?”

He shakes his head with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I don’t…I’m okay without,” he says. “I can slide around the ice well enough in my boots, if need be – and of course, I’ve got skis.”

I wonder how much of this is him treating us to lavish gifts while keeping nothing for himself and how much is concern or embarrassment over his leg. “If you can ski, you can skate,” I tell him firmly.

I mean for the words to sound like friendly encouragement but they come out sounding like an order, and caught up in this little burst of authority, I set aside my new skis, snatch Pollux’s skates away from him, and press them into a wide-eyed Peeta’s hands. “Skate with me, Peeta,” I entreat, deliberately softening my tone. “I’ll help you. You can lean on me for balance and –”

“ _Yes_ ,” he breathes, closing his fingers around the skates, almost greedily, as he leans toward me. His eyes are dark and warm, and I feel an overwhelming compulsion to lean up and press a quick, happy kiss to his cheek.

_Not for me, not for me, not for me…_

“Okay,” I say, blushing hotly. “Let’s go to the lake.”

We make our way through the fresh-fallen snow, and somehow or other my hand ends up curled at Peeta’s elbow. I tell myself it’s just New Year’s inducing a certain air of festivity, or maybe that I’m helping him keep his balance across the deepest drifts. When we reach the lakeside bench, Peeta kneels in the snow to fasten my skate straps, and once he’s finished I playfully trade places with him, pulling him up beside me then slipping from the bench to kneel at his feet.

I half-expect him to stop me, to insist on putting on his own skates, but he doesn’t. He simply watches me with a look that’s half wonder and half disbelief – the way he says I look at even the most ordinary things when they’re unexpectedly given to me. I’m not sure what part of having his skates strapped on for him is so unbelievable, but his expression makes my heart swell and glow like an ember.

“Is this okay?” I ask as I snug the strap at his right ankle, cradling his foot on my thigh. The prosthesis looks no different in a boot, and of course he wears a sock over it as well, so the limb doesn’t even _feel_ particularly different through the weathered leather, but I still can’t help wondering whether I’m fastening the skates too tightly or otherwise.

“It’s _perfect_ ,” he whispers, but his eyes never leave my face.

Peeta may well be the gentlest boy in the world, so slow and tender and careful at everything he does, but this counts for absolutely nothing when it comes to coordination and agility. He’s stocky and clumsy and substantially heavier than me, maybe doubly so in his bearskin, and keeping him upright on the ice is a bit like a desperate squirrel trying to stop a falling oak tree from hitting the ground. We’re barely six steps onto the lake when his left foot sails wildly in a sharp diagonal, and trying to push it back only succeeds in toppling us both onto the ice. Peeta lands on his back and I sprawl gracelessly across him, pulled so abruptly by his weight and the force of its fall that my face smacks into his chest and I can’t breathe for several moments – and even then I’m gasping for air through a thick layer of white bear’s fur.

“You okay?” Peeta asks, cupping my head with one gloved hand, but his body is already shaking with silent laughter.

“Fine,” I grunt through a mouthful of fur, and I lift my head with a groan.

“Hey,” he says softly. His eyes are brighter than I’ve ever seen them – the blue of a crisp winter morning – and his hand lingers at the back of my hood. With a sigh and one quick movement, I could lay my head on his chest again, and I’m astonished by the force of the urge I feel to do just that.

“You still want to teach me to skate?” he asks, softer still, and for a moment I wonder if he might have heard my thoughts.

“Of course,” I reply, climbing off him with another groan or two, then I help get his skates beneath him and _slowly_ heft him up from a crouch. “I fell a dozen times when I first tried to skate,” I tell him. “The main thing is to keep your knees slightly bent at all times – you’ll have much better control of your movements that way – and _relax_ into a fall, not tense up.”

“Relax into a fall?” he says dubiously, but his eyes are smiling.

“It’ll save you a world of aches and bruises afterward,” I promise.

We have ample opportunity to test this theory. It takes Peeta’s limbs a good while to find balance; to equate sliding a foot across ice on something as thin as a knife’s blade to what he does on ski runners in deep snow, but he’s steady and persistent and impossibly patient, with both his body’s limitations and my own inexpert instruction. “Are you tired of this yet?” I ask, with more than a little apology, as I help him up from his fifth fall.

“Not at all,” he assures me with a grin. “I’m having fun. You’re a good teacher, Katniss.”

I shrug this off as I get him upright once more, but an idea has come to me at the thought of skiing, and I skate around behind him and take hold of his waist. “This might be a bad idea,” I warn. “But suppose we try it this way? I can prompt you to bend your knees and keep your strides small, and maybe having extra weight behind you will slow you down a little.”

More than one of his falls has been the result of an overenthusiastic foot.

He gives a shaky laugh. “As you well know, you’re light as a chickadee,” he teases. “But it’s worth a try.”

I nudge the backs of his knees and they give beneath him, though he recovers quickly with a robust laugh and attempts a few cautious strides forward. When these are successful, his strides broaden – emboldened by success, he’s getting ahead of himself again – and I catch hold of his right thigh, hoping to shorten the movement, but instead I startle him and he tumbles forward with a gasp, skates skittering madly for purchase on the ice. He catches himself on his hands and knees, and I crouch down to help him up yet again.

“Maybe,” he rasps, “maybe _I_ could hold on to _you_? That way you can set the pace, and it might be easier than trying to, um…hold me back.”

There’s a certain sense to this, despite our size difference, and I anticipate it’ll be much easier to pull Peeta on ice than snow. “Okay,” I say, and I guide him behind me, placing his hands on the wool over my hips. “You can feel the stride,” I explain, swishing my skates back and forth to demonstrate, “and the weight shift. Just keep your knees soft and make small movements.”

This proves the most successful of any of my methods thus far, which makes sense, really, when I think of learning to ski behind Peeta. With me in front setting the pace, he’s able to follow remarkably well, so there’s barely any dead-weight to pull behind me, and when my strides get too ambitious, his hands tighten on my hips, slowing me down. His knees bump the back of my legs every now and again, but it’s a brief nudge and my balance is good. We don’t take a single fall with me in front.

Peeta’s hands on my hips are at once comforting and unsettling. Broad and strong and _so_ steady, I feel a whisper of their heat with every movement of my thighs, and it helps me feel in tandem with him, as though our bodies are fused somehow; parts of the same whole. But it’s also a very intimate hold. No one has ever touched my hips before, let alone _held_ me by them, except for that one exuberant moment after Peeta took me skiing – when he lifted me up onto his kitchen worktop and fed me peanut butter cookie dough – and when I stop to recall it, my breath hitches in my throat.

“Are you okay?” Peeta murmurs against my hood. “You’re probably getting tired of lugging me around. We can stop if you want.”

I _don’t_ want to stop, not at all, which tells me clearly that it’s time and past I _should_. “Sure,” I tell him, easing free from his warm grip and skating in a little circle to face him. “I think we lost Pollux and Lavinia.”

“They like to give us space,” he says, chuckling as though this is a beloved old joke. “I want to work a little on your snow-girl, and then we’ll challenge them to a snowball fight, if you like.”

Peeta refers to his snow-Katniss – the snow-woman I made nearly a month ago now, which he sculpted to look like me – as _my_ snow-girl, never as “Katniss” or his own creation. He’s strangely devoted to maintaining her appearance and comes out after every substantial snowfall to clear and, if needed, re-carve her features with a meticulous degree of patience. He’s added other little details over the past few weeks as well: a sheath of arrows across her narrow back, pebble buttons down the front of her carved “coat,” a foraging bag over one “shoulder.”

We help each other out of our skates then Peeta takes both pairs and my hand for good measure. “Come with me,” he says with a grin, tugging me toward the snow-Katniss. “It’s rare that I get the subject in the same room as the portrait, and I’ve got plenty to do after last night’s snow.”

“I thought there was no working today,” I tease.

“This isn’t work, Katniss,” he replies, quite seriously, though his eyes are practically _sparkling_. “This is art. Pure pleasure.”

He stands me alongside the snow-Katniss, like Pollux did when he tried to explain that she looked like me, and sets to work with no finer tools than a pocketknife and his gloved hands. He clears away the excess snow much as I remove the fat and flesh from a hide: slow, shallow strokes of the blade, taking care not to cut into the solid-packed snow beneath. I’ve watched him do this from a distance, but there’s something breathtaking about being close enough to see every precise flick of the knife and sweep of a fingertip, clearing away snow dust. About the flash of long golden lashes and a blue brighter than the sky as his eyes flicker between my face and hers. About how carefully he shapes her lips, squinting a little as he assesses the contours then traces them with his thumb, and not to remove snow dust. It’s a lover’s touch, needless and tender, and a mad part of me wonders if he would kiss that carved-snow mouth if I weren’t here, waiting and watching.

I wonder if it was a kiss that brought Grandma Lydda’s snow maiden to life. After all, kisses are powerful things in nearly all of the old tales. Perhaps the couple who made her trudged away from where she stood, hearts heavy with loneliness, and she came to life not by a fairy’s whim or a slant of light but a kiss from a passing village boy, drawn in by her small nose and stubborn little chin and that beautifully carved mouth that cries out to be kissed.

Perhaps she _didn’t_ melt in the spring but left to spend the balmy months with her sweetheart, the reverse of an even older tale of Granny Ashpet’s, where the king of the earth and the queen of its bounty both loved a maiden, one as husband and the other as mother, and the girl divided her year between their kingdoms. Perhaps the snow maiden wintered with the parents who formed her, then lay all spring and summer and autumn long in sweet dappled shadows with the boy who had kissed her to life.

“You’re looking very thoughtful,” Peeta says, gently drawing me out of my fairytale wonderings.

“I was thinking of the snow maiden,” I reply, “from Grandma Lydda’s tale. You said they didn’t know how she came to life, and I thought…maybe a kiss,” I confess, blushing.

Peeta smiles at this but, to my relief, doesn’t laugh. “I’ve wondered that myself,” he says. “Suppose they made her at New Year’s, near an evergreen tree, and tied ribbons to its boughs to give their pretend-child a festive home for the holiday. There’s a special magic in New Year’s kisses,” he adds, very softly, as he traces the snow-Katniss’s mouth once more. “At least, there was in Grandma Lydda’s old tales.”

Pollux and Lavinia join us then, laughing as they stumble through the drifts and point proudly toward the stable where they’ve built a lumpy, lopsided snow-Pollux and snow-Rye. “What, no sleigh?” Peeta asks with a wink, and Pollux gives him a good-natured shove in reply.

I take a moment to examine my own snowman and dust the fresh snow from his round head and scarf – Peeta’s soft red scarf, still looped jauntily about his neck, even after a month of wind and snow. He’s a child’s creation, crudely formed and silly, but he’s also a symbol of my new life here. One of the first things I did on my very first day at Peeta’s house was play in the pure, sweet snow, making snow angels and throwing snowballs – and building this snowman.

“He’s still my favorite,” Peeta says, coming alongside me to fuss with the snowman’s scarf. “When I saw him, I knew you could be happy here.”

I look up at Peeta; at his worn wool stocking cap, my father’s threadbare scarf, and his own priceless bearskin. At this gentle boy of opposites, who gave his fine new scarf to a snowman and wears a poor man’s clothes instead. I want, more than I would have thought possible, to tug down Dad’s scarf and press a kiss to Peeta’s cheek, but he has a sweetheart, however oblivious, and I’ve made him a fur muffler as a material token of my admiration. I’m his huntress, a half-wild creature who shows her regard with gifts of meat and fur and feathers, not kisses and caresses and tender words. Peeta wouldn’t welcome such behavior, and it would be embarrassing of me to try.

A snowball sails over my head: a warning shot, launched by an eager Pollux, and the fight is on. Peeta gives a playful shout and returns fire on my behalf, taking care to direct the game away from our snow-people so neither will be struck by a wayward throw. His throws aren’t as precise as mine, but he’s the strongest of us all, so his snowballs fly fast and hit hard. Pollux yelps when the first one strikes him squarely in the ribs, but he waves aside Peeta’s apologies with a grin and gestures for the game to continue.

Lavinia makes small snow pellets, about the size of chicken eggs, and throws them at everyone – even Pollux, to his surprise and dismay. He gives her a look that clearly says _Whose side are you on?_ but she only laughs and dodges back as she quickly forms snowball after snowball and tosses them at all of us. I focus my attack on Pollux, naturally, but he gets even fewer hits than before – because, I realize of a sudden, Peeta’s shielding me. I thought he was just playing aggressively, moving in front of me to be nearer his target, but then he raises an hand to catch a snowball that would have struck my shoulder and hurls it back, half-powder, at Pollux.

He’s been doing this all along, dancing in front of me and catching most of the blows, and I had simply thought it was how he played the game. But I see now that he’s _protecting_ me. He has been, all along, blocking their throws with the strong bulk of his body and concentrating his own throws on Pollux because Pollux is concentrating on _me_.

I don’t know whether to be furious or touched or deeply confused by this behavior, but neither Pollux nor Lavinia look particularly surprised. They finally give up on trying to hit me at all and join forces, combining their snow-artillery and hurling every bit of it at Peeta, and something hot and fierce flares in my gut. I run directly into their line of fire and throw myself at Peeta, knocking him to the ground, then I huddle atop him, covering his head and chest and hips with my small body.

 _Safe,_ my heart growls, like a cougar over her cubs. _Mine._

_No harm._

“Katniss,” Peeta gasps beneath me. My face is mashed against his from forehead to nose tip, so close that I taste my name on his breath. The snow beneath us seeps through the knees of my trousers where they bracket his hips, but I couldn’t care less. “ _Katniss,_ ” he says again, a sweet sigh of cider and honey and pine bark.

I rub my forehead against his in a semblance of a head-shake. “Safe,” I tell him, and slip both hands beneath his head to cradle it a little. _My sweet boy,_ I croon silently. _Safe at last._

_No harm._

“I’m…okay, you know,” he says, unconvincingly. His voice is rough and raw, less than a whisper. “It’s just a game.”

 _And what happens in the arena is just a game,_ I think. A game of fear and hunger and blood, where a wolverine and a bear and a brute Career hurt Peeta, hitting and crushing him and tearing his flesh, and all I could do was watch and weep.

I’m a huntress. I’ve killed more rabbits than any Career has ever _seen_ ; skinned and carved them and tanned their pelts to make a garment for this boy. I can sever a turkey’s spine with a single bowshot and strike the heart of a young buck without piercing either lung. I’m small but fierce, worse than any wolverine, and no one is ever going to hurt my boy again.

His hands creep up to my face, slipping between the fur lining of my hood and my hot cheeks. “Sweetheart,” he whispers, with a groan so deep I feel it between my thighs, where they part over his belly. “I thought _I_ was protecting _you_.”

I sit up quickly with a keening pain in my heart. Either Peeta is dazed from hitting his head – here on the ground or on the ice earlier – or he misses his girl so desperately that he’s seeing her everywhere today. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. Our mouths were all but touching a moment ago, and Peeta believes in the magic of New Year’s kisses. Maybe he thought I had _become_ her, somehow – which hurts more than I could ever have imagined.

“I’m s-sorry,” I stammer, mortified by my behavior. Beneath me, Peeta lies flushed and warm; his eyes a dark, drowned, drowsy blue. “I don’t know what –”

“You _protected_ me,” he says, sitting up to bring us face to face once more.

“It’s the first time I could,” I whisper, and at once his arms are around me, holding me so close that my heart swells to bursting and hurls itself against my ribs, again and again. _Let me out, let me out!_ it cries. _Out of this tiny cage and into his hands._

I know I’m being foolish, trying so fiercely to protect Peeta from a friendly snowball fight, but for some reason he welcomes it. _I want to take care of you too,_ I told him on the night I hissed and snarled and struck at him like a viper, and still he wrapped me in fur and held me close. Maybe he’s never had such friends before, or known such care.

I think of his response to the stocking full of foraged things and butt my head against his neck like a goat kid in search of a pat. As much as it’s in my power, this boy who gives me everything will never want for _anything_ , ever again.

“How about some lunch?” he murmurs against my ear. “There’s plenty of New Year’s still to go, and I’m starting to feel a little sorry for Pollux and Lavinia.”

I pull back in surprise and look around us to see that the Avoxes are gone – over at the stable, working on their snow-figures once more. Peeta wasn’t kidding about them giving us space.

“I’ll tell them,” I say, climbing off him. “I owe them an apology as it is.”

I dread the interaction that will come, anticipating coldness or hostility at my strange behavior, but both Pollux and Lavinia are smiling when I arrive, and I’ve barely opened my mouth when Pollux seizes me in a bear hug and kisses the top of my hood. “I’m sorry,” I mumble against his parka. “I just…went a little crazy for a minute.”

He shakes his head firmly and releases me so he can take out his slate. _All okay,_ he writes, then he turns the slate back to add another message. Lavinia reads this one over his shoulder, only to give a startled sound and wipe away half of it with her damp mitten.

It now reads: _We know you l_

I raise my brows. _We know you_ would have been sufficient; maybe even funny, coming from Pollux. What else did he write that Lavinia didn’t want me to see?

I look up from the slate to find his eyes unusually serious. The way he looked at me the first time we went into the woods, when I tried to dust out the words he’d written in the snow.

 _You love him,_ I’d said. _So do you,_ he replied.

I shake my head at the words that hang between us. “No,” I tell him. “I care about him; take care of him.”

Pollux shrugs, a noncommittal gesture that suggests he either doesn’t believe me or doesn’t see much difference between what he implied and what I countered with, and Lavinia hits his shoulder with a scowl. She tugs his slate over to her, pulling on his neck in the process, and wipes away all of its contents with a mittened hand.

 _Know how much you care,_ she writes. _Weren’t upset. Or surprised._

“Okay,” I say, mollified a little by her reassurance. “I’m sorry, though. I didn’t mean to break up the game.”

Pollux snatches back his slate, rubs away her message with the heel of his hand, and writes quickly.

_Trust me: NO ONE was upset that it ended like that._

I’ve barely read the last word when Lavinia yanks the slate away and smacks Pollux in the chest with it. I’ve never seen her like this: a little angry and _thoroughly_ exasperated. Then again, she’s known Pollux much longer than I have, and I imagine the effect he has on people only increases with time.

“I thought you came to apologize, not start another fight,” Peeta teases from behind me. He looks, more than anything, highly amused by Pollux and Lavinia’s altercation. “There’s lunch in the stable, if anyone wants to join me.”

We follow him inside and strip off our damp outer garments while he lays out the woolen blankets he keeps in the sleigh, in a sort of picnic fashion, in front of the stable stove. We join him, sitting cross-legged in a circle, and he sheds his own outer layers, then sits beside me to unpack our meal.

It’s not unlike the typical contents of my lunch pouch, times four. There are tall flasks of cider and hot chocolate, half-loaves of three kinds of bread with butter and goat cheese for spreading, cold sausage and hard cheeses and boiled eggs, iced gingerbread and frosted sugar cookies, apples and carrots – plenty for us _and_ Rye to enjoy – and an enormous crock filled with morsels of cold roast chicken.

I turn my face against Peeta’s shoulder to hide my tears and press a kiss to its curve. He catches his breath, but I pull away again without looking at him. I’m a huntress, after all; a feral thing, suited to gifts of meat and hide and bones, not kisses and caresses. Peeta can’t like it when I forget myself like this, and I know he doesn’t want such tender gestures from me.

But it doesn’t stop him from making a sandwich of cold chicken and goat cheese on nutty seed bread and shyly offering it to me.

None of us is especially hungry, in light of our massive breakfast, but all the exertion in the snow has stirred up our appetites, and we each eat a respectable fourth of the meal with ease. I’m still a little hungry when we’re done, not to mentioned surprised at the absence of a baked sweet for dessert, but Peeta grins in answer to my puzzled half-frown and reaches back into the hamper to remove a dense round cake, dark gold in color and about the size of a dinner plate.

“I promised you cakes after New Year’s,” he reminds me as he reaches for a knife. “I thought this would be a fun way to start. I call it ‘Rye’s Cake,’” he says, his eyes dancing. “It’s made with rye flour and oats, apples, carrots, cinnamon, molasses – and a few sugar cubes, of course.”

We all laugh heartily at this – a cake made of Rye’s favorite foods, with his namesake thrown in for good measure – though I can’t deny my mouth is watering at the prospect. “Can Rye have some too?” I ask, more out of curiosity than anything else. Lady will eat absolutely anything, but I have no idea if ponies share the same sort of appetite.

Peeta grins. “He’s a baker’s pony, Katniss,” he says. “He’s stolen shortbread and cookies and bites of sandwich right out of my hand. I’d be wounded if he _didn’t_ gobble it up.”

He slices the cake into generous fifths and takes the extra himself over to Rye’s stall. “Hey boy,” he says, calling to the pony with an affectionate cluck of his tongue, but Rye’s long face is already reaching over the door as he stretches his neck toward Peeta, eager for a treat. “Easy now,” Peeta says, breaking off the point of the slice and holding it out on his palm. “Give that a try.”

Rye lips up the bite of cake as greedily as he would a carrot or piece of apple and immediately swings his muzzle toward Peeta’s other hand, which holds the rest of the slice. Peeta laughs and breaks off a larger piece this time, and Rye takes it directly from his fingers.

“Horses have a sweet tooth,” Peeta explains over his shoulder as he feeds Rye the rest of the slice, bit by bit. “It’s why they like sugar and apples and carrots so much. You don’t want to go overboard, of course, but it’s a good way to get them to behave when they’re being stubborn.” The cake being gone, he presses a quick kiss to the pony’s muzzle and ruffles his mane then comes back to join us at our stove-side picnic.

After watching Rye devour the cake, I’m a little doubtful as to how good it can taste to a human palate, but my first cautious bite is so moist and rich and sweet that I melt a little against Peeta. _You should know better by now,_ chides a voice in my head. _Has this boy ever made anything that was less than delicious?_ “This is _amazing_ ,” I sigh, gazing up at him in what is undoubtedly both wonder and disbelief.

“My pony has good taste,” he replies with a grin, and eases an arm around my shoulders.

I don’t sit up again as I finish my cake, and Peeta doesn’t take his arm away. I’ve grown increasingly sleepy since we sat down to our meal, and my eyes drift shut as I lean against Peeta’s shoulder. “Right on schedule,” he says tenderly, brushing back a strand of hair that’s escaped my braid. “Once we’ve gone round the square, visited the neighbors, and finished lunch, Mellarks always nap. New Year’s is a busy day, and we’ve got supper and presents still to come – and bakery work the next morning, all the earlier.”

“You want us to nap?” I ask drowsily, and am rewarded with a kiss on the top of my head.

“Yes,” Peeta murmurs against my hair. “Anywhere you like, for as long as you like. I’ll be up first to start supper, and I can wake the rest of you if it starts to get late.”

He helps me to my feet and back into my coat, cap, and scarves, then he bends to clean up our picnic while Pollux and Lavinia each take a handful of carrot and apple pieces over to feed Rye. “Go rest, Katniss,” he urges. “This will only take a minute or two, and we’ll wake you in plenty of time for supper.”

I make my way back to the house, but by the time I’m there and out of my outerwear and boots, the wave of sleepiness has passed. I know I should probably still nap and undoubtedly _will_ , but first I need to take advantage of everyone’s absence and hide Peeta’s muffler among the hearthside presents. I change clothes before I do, though, leaving my snow-dampened corduroys on the warming rack to dry thoroughly and slipping back into my festive nightgown, which is still flung across the foot of the bed where I left it this morning in my rush to dress for going outside.

Barefoot on fire-warmed fur and wrapped shoulders to ankles in pretty flannel, I tie the red ribbon at the neckline of my nightgown, feeling warm and content and spoiled beyond words. As an afterthought I tug the tie from my braid and finger-comb the sections, then shake my head at my reflection. Katniss Everdeen, wearing a nightgown and unplaiting her hair in the middle of a day of pure leisure. This might be the most unusual part of Peeta’s New Year’s yet.

I tuck the wrapped muffler under my arm and scurry downstairs, swift and silent as a field mouse. I can hear Peeta in the kitchen, washing the dishes from our lunch, and no one is currently in the living room, so I dip beneath the kissing bough and make my way to the fireside to slip the muffler between the striped sweet-shop box and the large, soft parcel from my mother. No one will notice another gift hidden there.

This being done, I pause beside the low table where my New Year’s orange still lies and cup it in both hands, like the treasure it is.

“We can do that now, if you want,” says Peeta’s voice softly from the doorway, and I look up to see him standing directly beneath the kissing bough, a dishtowel in his hands. “Unless there’s a special time, or way – or you’re too tired –”

“Not at all,” I tell him, and wonder why I’ve suddenly lost the ability to draw an even breath. “I mean: now is great.”

“I’ll be right back, then,” he says, and I sit in the armchair nearest the hearth, toying with the orange, while he returns to the kitchen. I feel like I did on the lake today when he held me by the hips: comforted and unsettled all at once. There should be some sort of ritual to what we’re about to do, not just sitting here and sharing an orange, and I feel a little foolish for having suggested it. Peeta wants to make this our own tradition, but what significance is there in sharing a single orange on New Year’s Day when he feeds me all the oranges and orange juice I want every other day of the year?

Peeta comes back with his hands full: an empty soup bowl, his pine-patterned teapot, and the enormous bowl-sized mug. “I made cinnamon tea for us to share,” he says shyly, setting the mug on the table and pouring it full. “I thought: cinnamon and oranges go well together, but if you don’t –”

“That sounds great,” I blurt. “So, um…where should we…?”

“You tell me,” he says. “This was something you did with your dad – at the fireside, right?”

I think back to that New Year’s, sitting on Dad’s lap in Granny Ashpet’s rocking chair, and I blush. I can hardly sit on Peeta’s lap, but it doesn’t feel right to just sit side-by-side on the sofa, like on every other day. “Sit here,” I tell him, clambering out of the armchair. The seat is plenty wide; I should be able to squeeze in alongside him.

“Okay,” he says, looking a little confused as he takes the seat. “What about you? Where will you be?”

“Um…right there,” I reply, pointing at the worrisomely narrow remainder of seat cushion beside his right hip. “We’re supposed to sit together, and if you inch over a bit –”

“Katniss,” he interrupts, very quietly. “You can sit on my lap if you want. If you…it’s okay.”

I’ve been in Peeta’s lap before, when he comforted me after my dream of Granny Ashpet and the twin fawns – and also the day he tried to put me to bed on the sofa, when I clung to him in my sleep and forced him to sit and hold me for half an hour. And this is just sharing an orange and tea; I’m neither crying nor sleeping nor begging to be held.

“Okay,” I say, and settle carefully on his knees. “Is…is this all right?”

Peeta slips an arm around my waist and tugs me firmly backward, so my back is against his chest and my backside rests on his thighs. “More than all right,” he sighs into my hair. He reaches for a blanket from the warming rack to drape across my lap, then he curls both arms around my waist and leans up to rest his chin on my shoulder, spooning himself against my back. “Do you want to peel the orange,” he asks, “or should I?”

I steal one big hand from where it lies against my ribs and press the orange into it, and I feel Peeta smile against my neck. “Fair enough,” he says. He takes the orange between his hands, resting them on the blanket that covers my lap, then he pierces the skin with his thumbnail and peels it back with about three smooth motions of his broad thumbs. “In spring Dad makes an orange curd filling for wedding cakes,” he explains with a chuckle. “So we’ve all gotten pretty good at peeling oranges.”

I reach for the bowl he brought, having guessed it’s for collecting the orange peel and any seeds we might find. “I figured you’d want to keep this for something,” he says, laying the peel inside. “Unless there’s something special you did with it that New Year’s – like putting it on the fire to scent the house?”

Peeta saves all of his orange peels: for his birds, for scenting the hearths, for adding to cider and tea, for grating into breads and cakes like my mother did. “We enjoyed the peel from that New Year’s orange for a long time after,” I tell him. “Even a little bit of it added to tea or bread made for a special treat.”

“I’ll do something extra special with this one, then,” he promises.

He runs a thumbnail along one seam and gently opens the peeled orange into two perfect halves, and my mouth waters at the sight of the plump sections, all but bursting with juice. “What now?” he murmurs against my shoulder, and I turn sideways on his lap, drawing up my knees beneath the blanket.

“Now,” I say, “we each take a half and, um…we feed each other.”

It’s a simple thing, little different from what my father and I did six years ago, and yet there’s something heart-catchingly intimate about doing this with Peeta. We’ve fed each other bits of food before but never like this: curled together beneath a blanket in a fireside armchair, with me in his lap.

Peeta slips an arm beneath my knees to pull me even closer, and we take turns separating our orange halves into sections and raising the bright half-moons to each other’s mouth. The second one bursts with juice between Peeta’s teeth and squirts my fingers with sweet stickiness, making us both laugh. I bring that hand to my mouth, meaning to lick it clean, but Peeta catches my wrist and draws my fingers back to his mouth instead. “That’s mine, greedy gosling,” he teases, and closes his mouth around my juice-spattered fingers for a quick, thorough suck.

I feel his tongue, hot and soft beneath my fingertips, and something lurches in my belly, something deep and fierce and terrifying. I pull my fingers from his mouth with a wet _pop_ that only intensifies the feeling, and I realize he’s just as startled as I am. His face is flushed, but not with embarrassment, and his eyes are wide, the pupils enormous. “I’m sorry, Katniss,” he whispers. “I was just being silly.”

“I know you were,” I whisper back. He was just trying to lick the juice from his orange from my fingers, as might a child. It’s a ridiculous thing for a sixteen-year-old to do, maybe, but not unheard of, and Peeta’s been in a playful mood for most of the week. I can understand why he did it. I just don’t understand why it felt like that, so hot and strange and primal.

“We can stop, if you want,” he says. “I can leave –”

“No,” I plead, curling my fingers in the front of his sweater. “I don’t know why I reacted like that, and I’m sorry. Please stay?”

“ _Always,_ ” he sighs with evident relief, and he nuzzles my forehead with his cheek. “Can you reach the tea?” he asks. “I just – it might be…safer.”

I cradle the mug to his chest, where we can very nearly both sip from it at once, and in between mouthfuls of warm, heady cinnamon we bring orange sections to each other’s lips. Now and again one will leak a few sticky golden droplets onto our fingers, but we lick them clean ourselves, and I try not to look too closely at Peeta’s tongue as it runs along his fingertips, nor remember how it felt beneath mine.

Little by little my drowsiness returns, and I rest my head against Peeta’s shoulder as he continues to feed me orange sections and small sips of tea, cooled by his breath. “This is nice,” I murmur.

“It is,” he agrees, the words a fragrant sigh of cinnamon and sweet orange against my brow. “Maybe we could do this again sometime – before next New Year’s?”

“Any day,” I yawn, burrowing my face into the warm, musky hollow of his neck. “Every day.”

I must fall asleep then, because the next thing I know, I’m lying on a bed and abruptly cold, despite the heavy fur spread over me. “No,” I whimper, reaching blindly in the direction where I last felt warmth and catching hold of a woolen sleeve over a muscular forearm. “Please don’t go,” I whisper. “Lie down with me, just for a little.”

If I were slightly more conscious, I would be mortified by these words, but in this strange dreamlike moment I’m aware only of a desperate need to keep this person close. They don’t reply, but neither do they pull away – or make any move at all – and I add as a final plea: “It’s New Year’s. No working, and everyone naps after lunch. _Please._ ”

My fur cover is carefully turned back, and with a little give in the mattress, I roll into someone’s arms. It’s sweet and musky and deliciously warm there, and I press closer still to lay my cheek on a firm chest. A heart pounds beneath my ear, fleet and frantic, like the hooves of a doe racing a wolf pack. _I like this place,_ I think. _I belong here._

“You have no idea, do you?” whispers Peeta – the fairytale riddle, repeated a fourth time now – and I feel his fingers in my hair, stroking its length from scalp to tips. “My huntress. How fitting it is to call you that.”

I curl my arms around his waist and tangle my fingers against his spine. I wonder if I am the moon again. If I’m naked beneath this coverlet, or perhaps pregnant with his fawns. “I hunt for you,” I say.

“You lay snares with your eyes,” he whispers, a distant echo as sleep overtakes me once more. “And I step into every single one of them. _Gladly._ ”

* * *

It’s fully dark outside when Lavinia comes to wake me, and I’ve never been so reluctant to move in all my life. I’m in my own bed, lying on top of the blankets and covered with the extra fur from the chest at the foot of the bed, with a pine needle pillow tucked beneath my head.

I frown, stroking my fingers over the place beside me. No one’s there, of course, and the fox fur coverlet is cool to the touch, not warm with the echo of another’s body heat. I only dreamt that Peeta lay down with me; that we held each other as we slept away the afternoon.

But I _know_ I fell asleep in the armchair as we shared our New Year’s orange and cinnamon tea. If I only dreamt that he carried me up to bed and then stayed when I asked him to, how did I get here?

“Lavinia,” I say, sitting up, “was Peeta…was I alone all afternoon?”

She steps close to the bed and tilts my chin with a gentle hand, regarding me solemnly, then she lifts my left arm and guides the sleeve beneath my nose. I breathe in, feeling ridiculous, and the smell that meets my nose is faint but unmistakable.

Musk. Boy-musk. The musk of Peeta’s body.

“ _Oh no,_ ” I groan.

At least half of what I remember from earlier is a dream, this much I know for certain, but Peeta’s scent on my sleeve means that we were physically very close, for an hour or more, and not long ago. That, likelier than not, I asked him to lie down with me here, and he _did_.

I’m not sure why he agreed – to spare my feelings? to indulge a half-conscious request? – but I feel terrible for it, especially in light of what I recall of sharing our orange at the fireside. Curling up in his lap. Falling asleep on his shoulder. Pulling my fingers from his mouth in horror when all he wanted to do was lick up a few stray drops of orange juice.

I wonder if I could stay up here for the rest of the night and have Lavinia just bring me a plate of supper.

Apparently I speak this thought aloud, because Lavinia raises her eyebrows sharply and tugs up the slate from beneath her sweater. _NO_ , she writes in large block letters, followed by a list of sorts:

_Venison_  
_Muffler  
_ _Presents_

She’s right, of course, on all counts. However embarrassing it will be to face Peeta tonight, I can’t very well skip a New Year’s feast that I helped provide, and as doubtful as I am about him liking the muffler, it’s my huntress gift. The fur and down from my kills, cleaned and tanned and stitched together into something practical and warm, just for him. If I’m not there when he opens it, he might not even know what it is.

And however much I don’t deserve presents, I owe it to Mom and Prim and whoever else sent me things to go downstairs and open them.

I give Lavinia a resigned little shrug and climb out of bed. I look at her then, _really_ look at her, and realize she’s taken special care with her appearance tonight. She’s utterly stunning at _all_ times, of course, even sleepy and unkempt like she was this morning, but tonight she seems to have stepped out of one of Grandpa Asa’s fairy tales. Her vibrant hair is braided round her head in a fiery crown, and she wears a long, billowing skirt of green-and-red plaid with a finely woven sweater of evergreen wool. It turns her pale skin the color of fresh cream and her hazel eyes the warm caramel-gold of the sweet-shop’s toffee buttons. Neither Peeta nor Pollux will be able to take their eyes off her.

I know well how it feels when someone’s eyes slide over you, relegating you to part of the scenery, and up till now, I’ve been glad of it. Being invisible, as it were, makes trading and scavenging much easier and, of course, spares undue attention to the state of my patched, shabby clothing – or, in our leanest days, my hollow, scrawny body, little better than tendon and bone beneath my father’s overlarge sweaters.

But tonight, somehow, I know it will hurt to be overlooked.

For the first time ever, Lavinia doesn’t give me a choice of clothing. There’s a single outfit on the warming rack, and she hands it to me one deliberate piece at a time. Underthings the color of a storm cloud. Silvery silk stockings, feather-light and fragile as cobwebs. A month ago I would have snagged them beyond repair simply by touching them with my callused fingers. Four weeks of Capitol soaps and creams may have worked wonders in softening my skin, but still I draw the stockings up my legs with breathless care.

Finally she slips a dress over my head: the dove gray one from my drawer that Peeta bought for me before I came here. Like the stockings, it’s made of silk; soft and shimmering like starlight on the lake, with delicate cap sleeves, a knee-length skirt, and little pearlescent buttons that span from the collar to the high waistline.

I’ve never worn anything so beautiful in my life, and Lavinia gives a little gasp at the sight of me in it. _Beautiful,_ she writes on her slate. _Silver._ She gestures at my eyes, and I look in the mirror to gasp in my turn.

My olive skin is light with its winter pallor, but the dress turns my Seam-gray eyes to silver and makes my black hair luminous, even tangled as it is from my half-hearted unplaiting and a good deal of slumber to boot. I’ve never thought of myself as beautiful in the least, but in this fairytale dress of lake waves and starlight, I could almost believe it.

Lavinia seats me at the dressing table and brushes my hair till it lies smooth and sleek about my shoulders, then she helps me into a pair of high-buttoned shoes; the sort that Merchant girls wear for holidays and toastings and Reaping Day. I look between us as she does so, taking in our fine clothes with a frown of puzzlement. It’s not uncommon to dress up on New Year’s, of course. Back when Dad was alive, it was one of few days in the year when Mom took out her pretty Merchant dresses, to Prim’s and my delight. We stroked the lace and velvet with awed fingertips at every opportunity and dreamt of a day when we would have something as fine to wear ourselves. Our holiday dresses – like our everyday ones – were hand-me-downs, bartered from a neighbor or at the Hob and made over by Mom with scraps of lace from the remnant bin or a little bric-a-brac.

But what Lavinia and I are wearing tonight is the sort of thing that the wealthiest Merchant girls wear at New Year’s. I’ve seen them crossing the square in giggling bunches, lamplight glinting off their high-buttoned shoes and silk stockings and jewel-bright hems peeping out from beneath their long wool coats. They make themselves pretty for their parties and their sweethearts; for the ribbons and kisses to come at the end of the night.

But even if Peeta _has_ declared this a daylong party, neither Lavinia nor I have a sweetheart in attendance. So who are we dressing up for?

Lavinia kisses the top of my head – pronouncing me “done” – and goes to the door, but I hesitate beside the bed and finally reach beneath the pillow I slept on last night, where I tucked the wintergreen sprig from my companion before falling asleep. I’ve nearly convinced myself that I only dreamt their strange gift and half expect to find nothing there, but the proof meets my fingers straightaway: plump bright berries and cool green leaves, and none the worse for spending the day under my pillow.

I tuck the sprig behind my right ear; a splash of festive color against my dark hair and a striking contrast to the muted colors of my dress and stockings. It feels very _right_ to wear it this evening – and of course, if one of the people present is my companion, maybe they’ll react to seeing it.

I want them to see it; to know that I treasure their gift…but I wonder if I truly want them to react. If I truly want to know.

But by then Lavinia has a hand around my wrist and is tugging me impatiently out the door. Once we’re in the hallway, she points at the wintergreen sprig with a mysterious smile and tilts her head to lie on her hands, miming sleep. She’s never made this gesture before, but I can easily guess what it means.

“Yes,” I whisper, leaning close to her ear. “They left it on my pillow last night.”

It feels jarring to mention my companion outside of my bedroom; to talk about them at all, really, as though I’m betraying their trust. But Lavinia only smiles widely and scribbles a quick, cryptic message – _It’s about time_ – before putting away her slate.

I wonder briefly what she means, but the moment we reach the top of the stairs, my mind and senses are caught up in a rich cloud of the most glorious smells imaginable. Burning pine wood and freshly cut pine boughs. Hot roast venison and spiced wine, tart with cranberries. Baked squash and fresh bread and a heady golden cake.

And _oranges_. The entire house is redolent with orange, sweet and spiced, as though Peeta threw peels on every last hearth and boiled kettles full of them till even the timbers of the house echoed back their scent. Something jolts in my belly, the same hot, eager _something_ that terrified me in that brief half-second when Peeta sucked on my fingers, and I wonder if the smell of oranges will have this effect on me for the rest of my life. It doesn’t remind me of my father any longer: of one glorious New Year’s in a dark expanse of poverty and cold and hunger; of cuddling in his arms and drifting to sleep on his lap. It reminds me of Peeta now: of warm, musky hollows and cinnamon-sweetened breath in my face; of firelight on our skin and a fur coverlet turning back as strong arms close around me.

 _Not for me, not for me, not for me!_ says the voice in my head, screaming now, like a sobbing child pounding its fists as it flails on the floor in a tantrum. I stumble on the stairs and try to turn around, but Lavinia curls an arm through mine, steadying me, before guiding me down the rest of the way.

I think I might love this red-haired girl, who comforts me better than my own mother ever did, without even knowing what’s wrong. “Thank you,” I tell her, snugging my arm around hers in turn. Her eyes seek no further explanation, and I’m happy not to provide one.

We arrive at the dining room then, and I forget my strange moment of distress at the fairy tale that awaits us there. On the table, set for four tonight, is a true New Year’s feast: at one end, a hearty venison roast sprinkled with rosemary – no, _pine needles_ – and on the other venison ribs, their dark, delicious curves rubbed thoroughly with herbs and mouthwatering at a glance. Between these are platters of squash and boiled potatoes, both slick with butter; a round loaf of bread, bursting with cranberries; a small mountain of fresh cheese buns; Peeta’s soup tureen, full of a rich, gamey stew – most likely venison, in a stock made from its bones – and a savory rice dish with mushrooms, chestnuts, and shallots. On either end of the table are bowls of honey-glazed nuts and baked apples and, of course, tall steaming pitchers brimming with Grandma Lydda’s spiced wine.

The fireplace and sideboard are framed with fresh pine boughs; not for kissing, just for decoration and their sweet, resinous scent, and there are smaller boughs on the table as well, along with half a dozen plump beeswax candles, their golden columns studded – festively and fragrantly – with allspice berries, star anise, and little chips of cinnamon.

Pollux is waiting by the fireplace, dressed in a thick gray sweater and dark corduroy trousers, and I look at him just long enough to see that he’s trimmed his beard for the occasion – and then my eyes light on Peeta. He stands at the table, his curly head down as he places a spoon – the crude maple one I made for him in the woods yesterday – in the rice dish, and the sight of him knocks the breath from my lungs like a blow.

I’ve seen Peeta in both Capitol finery and tribute costumes, any of which could take your breath away with their beauty, ingenuity, and grandeur. Before tonight, I might have said he couldn’t wear anything that would surprise me.

Tonight he stands beside his feast dressed like a Merchant on his wedding day. A shirt of soft white linen with full drop sleeves; a waistcoat of deep blue velvet, fastened to the neck with bright brass buttons; and crisp brown trousers. I’ve seen such a boy often enough, golden-haired and laughing as he leaves the Justice Building with his new wife on his arm. A pink-cheeked Merchant bride in her mother’s wedding dress, her golden hair braided round her head and threaded with green or white ribbons.

Merchant boys might dress like that at New Year’s too, I suppose, but bundled as they are in jaunty scarves and heavy wool coats, I wouldn’t know the difference. Tonight Peeta is a bridegroom arrayed for his toasting, and I can’t tell whether that breaks my heart or steals it from my chest.

He looks up, his blue eyes widening as they find me, and his mouth drops open. His chest jerks with a ragged breath. “Katniss,” he says – or maybe he sighs it. “You…you’re _the moon._ ”

I look down at myself…at this weightless garment of silvery gray that dances about me like a curl of smoke and leaves my legs bare. _Dressed in shadow and wind,_ I think, _and my hair silken-smooth, unfurling behind me like a banner._

 _Do you share my dreams?_ my mind clamors, half in terror and half elation. _Did you lie in my arms in a willow cradle after painting the sky for me? Is that why you find my fawn-children beautiful – and is that how you are able to paint them? Because you saw that moment too: your huntress and mate, naked in your arms, and your twin fawns moving in her belly?_

He comes to me in the span of a single heartbeat, but he doesn’t take me in his arms like I expect. He doesn’t touch me at all – it’s almost like he’s _afraid_ to – but stands with his hands fussing at his sides and his eyes full of something at once tender and sharp with sorrow. “I never thought,” he whispers, half raising his right hand, as though he wants to stroke my cheek but doesn’t dare to. “I knew you were beautiful, Katniss – _so_ beautiful – but _this_ –”

“ _Please_ hold me,” I whisper. I should know better than to ask him for anything ever again, let alone today, but the space between us pulses like an angry wound and I can’t bear the ache a moment longer.

His arms close around me, sleeves billowing like swan’s wings, and I nestle my cheek against the warm velvet of his waistcoat. “You look beautiful too,” I murmur. He still hasn’t showered, and I hide my smile against one musky shoulder.

“This is traditional Mellark holiday garb,” he says, combing his fingers through my hair with a shaky laugh. “I’ve never heard it called ‘beautiful’ before, but I’ll take it.”

I lean back to look into his eyes and wonder how this perceptive boy, wise well beyond his years, can be so painfully oblivious. Is it so impossible to believe that he’s handsome, when it’s plain as day to those around him? Does he think that the loss of his leg makes him unattractive – in _any_ way? Or is it his sweetheart’s rejection that makes him defer a compliment to his clothing 

I bite back a scowl at thoughts of _her_ and wish I’d kept that extra parcel of venison for Peeta instead. A girl who can’t see Peeta Mellark for the prize that he is will hardly see the value in venison ribs.

“You scented the whole house with oranges,” I say, and wonder foolishly if their fragrance reminds him, and will forever, of _me_. Of holding his huntress at the fireside and feeding her oranges and cinnamon tea. Of carrying her upstairs to bed and joining her there when she asked. “Was that our orange peel…from earlier?” I ask, willing my cheeks not to flush.

“It was indeed,” he replies, smiling through a determined blush of his own. “I promised to make you something extra special, and you’ll get it after supper. It’s a New Year’s surprise,” he adds with a playful wink.

We sit down to supper, with Pollux and Peeta at the ends of the table and Lavinia and me on either side, and I consider again how like a family the four of us have become. It feels good – and oddly natural – that we should share this New Year’s meal, like kin or sweethearts or the very closest of friends.

I think of Mom and Prim, of course, and even miss them a little, but it’s more a matter of curiosity than true longing. I wonder what they’re eating tonight, and where. Whether they liked the cookies I chose for them, and how they felt at their first taste of snow ice cream. How many ribbons bedeck their kissing boughs, and where they will go at the end of the night.

“I have it on good authority that your mom and Prim are enjoying New Year’s supper with my family,” Peeta remarks, as though reading my thoughts. He fills a bowl with venison stew, thick with carrots, onions, and potatoes, and passes it to me with a smile. “Aunt Rooba and her kids will be there too. They’re a pretty lively bunch,” he chuckles, “but the nicest people you ever met, and they always help in the kitchen.”

I smile back at him, envisioning tiny Prim surrounded by Rooba’s robust, stocky brood and Peeta’s broad-shouldered father and brothers. She’ll be dwarfed in their presence – a wood violet among boulders – and wrap each and every one of them around her dainty fingers with one winsome smile.

We eat without haste: first stew, then ribs, then roast – then we start all over with the stew again. Peeta has outdone himself with venison, and I resolve to bring home another young buck as soon as I can, if only to see how else he can prepare it. The stew meat is vibrant with pepper and red wine; the ribs rich with garlic, crushed and rubbed deeply into the meat; the roast earthy and pleasantly sharp with whispers of pine – and all of it so impossibly tender that it melts off the bones and falls apart on my tongue. “Peeta,” I sigh appreciatively, “maybe you should have been a butcher’s son.”

He laughs. “High praise indeed,” he replies. “Aunt Rooba told me that very thing after a month of working with me in the kitchen, and I hoped that meant I was ready to cook for _you_.” I raise my brows at this, making him blush. “It’s enough for me to be a huntress’s companion,” he says. “To be worthy of filling her table and cooking her game.”

“ _Peeta_ ,” I chide, but my cheeks are burning at his praise – and hotter still when I realize that Pollux and Lavinia are watching me with identical expressions of amusement. “Everything you make is delicious beyond compare,” I tell him firmly. “ _I’m_ the one who needs to be worthy of it.”

He shakes his head, and his smile falters for a split second. “I told you,” he says, very gently. “It’s the other way around.”

I remember those words only too well from the night I was certain I’d lost him, along with this home – this whole fairytale life – because of my anger and desperation to repay his goodness in _any_ way possible. I remember his tears – his grief – at the thought that I would rather offer up my body for his pleasure than freely accept his gifts.

The only thing he wants in all the world is to _give_ – to _me_ – and I tried to cheapen his goodness by paying for it.

“I know,” I say quietly, “a-and I’m sorry. It’s just…old habits.”

“I know,” he answers, and slips his hand among the pine boughs and candles to squeeze mine reassuringly. “I’m not angry, Katniss, and never would be. Those habits helped you survive, and I can only be grateful for that.”

I turn my hand beneath his and squeeze it in turn. “But I still don’t deserve your cooking,” I insist.

“That may well be true,” he teases. “As much as I love these two – ” he gestures at Pollux and Lavinia with his free hand – “I can’t really trust them when it comes to opinions on my cooking.” He gives them a rueful smile – clearly he means no offense – and they reply with grins. “And for all I know,” he says to me, grinning himself now, “ _you’re_ just being nice.”

“Does that sound like me?” I ask.

The words are out of my mouth before I’ve had a moment to think about them, and everyone at the table laughs at once; a short burst, quickly subdued, but enough to make my blush return with a vengeance. All three of them have seen me at my worst, even if only for a moment. I managed to be angry at Peeta the very first night I came here, cold and poor and hollow with hunger, as he showered me with luxury and comfort. Rubbing warmth into my hands and feet, bringing me to a golden kitchen that smelled of fresh bread, feeding me hot chocolate with toast cubes and sweet apple slices, leading me to a bed covered in furs.

It’s difficult enough for me to “just be nice” when I _like_ what Peeta does. There’s no danger of me flattering his cooking, or anything else.

“Fair enough,” Peeta says. Our hands are still entwined among the evergreen, and he strokes his thumb across my palm in small, exquisite circles. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to make you the most amazing meals in the world.”

“I should hope not,” I answer with a deliberately impish grin. “I’m expecting the most amazing _cakes_ in the world, starting tomorrow.”

“You’ll get them,” he promises, bringing my hand to his mouth and pressing a kiss to the knuckles. “And _so_ much more.”

Lavinia makes a small sound, and I glance away from Peeta to see her watching us intently, a half-smile curving her beautiful mouth. We’re not doing anything wrong or even unusual for us, but something about having witnesses to this moment makes me quickly withdraw my hand from Peeta’s and turn back to my meal.

 _It’s too intimate,_ I think. _They might misunderstand._ Might see a lonely boy and a hungry girl, seeking something more than company from each other.

I raise a boiled potato to my mouth and break the butter-slick skin with my teeth. _Huntress and companion,_ I think. It’s more than I ever dreamt I’d be to _anyone_ , let alone Peeta Mellark. More than enough, in this fairytale life he’s given me.

We all eat and drink heartily of everything on the table, and yet there’s still a meal’s worth of food, maybe more, left over when we’re done. My eyes linger on the end of the venison roast – one scrap of tonight’s feast, containing more meat than my family saw for weeks on end this winter – and I know there will be a sandwich of it in my lunch pouch tomorrow. Cold, deliciously piney venison on cranberry bread, and maybe a little crock of boiled potatoes too.

“Our dessert is a little…out of season,” Peeta cautions as he leaves to retrieve it from the kitchen. “I hope no one minds.”

He returns with the cake I smelled earlier and half forgot about in the face of so much venison, prepared so many delicious ways. It’s twice the height of Rye’s cake and covered in silky cream-colored frosting, with a pattern of perfect little oranges and leafy vines winding across the top and spilling down the sides.

Peeta bakes for me daily, but not usually cakes and _never_ this fancy. “I mentioned this to Katniss earlier,” he says, “just offhand, as something my Dad makes in the spring, and then I realized it was a pretty mean trick to play on New Year’s. To tell someone about an amazing dessert at holiday-time and then proceed _not_ to make it for them.”

He cuts a generous wedge and serves it to me on a little pine-patterned plate. It’s a rich yellow cake, flecked with spices, with two glorious golden layers and a thin layer of creamy orange in-between. “It’s the wedding cake I told you about,” he says, his eyes at once shy and eager. “With orange curd filling.”

My heart skitters in my chest like a terrified mousekin, and my breath stills in my lungs. A piece of wedding cake, baked and sliced and served to me by a Merchant bridegroom on New Year’s Day. If we were on our knees before the living room fire, we would be married by now.

_Not for me. Not for me. Not for me._

“Is it okay?” Peeta wonders, perceptive as always. “Did you want something else?”

Of course he doesn’t mean it like that; doesn’t mean _anything_ by it. He made this particular cake because he’d mentioned it to me earlier, nothing more. Being a _wedding_ cake had nothing to do with it. Maybe he thought it would be especially appropriate for the occasion in light of our new tradition of a shared New Year’s orange – or even just our mutual love of oranges.

“It’s perfect,” I tell him. “Did you use my orange peel in it?”

“Not quite,” he says with a small, secret smile. “I made you something else with that; something special, I hope. This uses half a dozen oranges on its own.”

I envision sitting in Peeta’s lap as his broad hands peel _half a dozen_ oranges on my knees, one after another, and open them gently into perfect halves of plump, juicy sections. “Half a dozen oranges,” I say faintly. “Now you’re just spoiling me.”

“It was never my intention to do anything else,” he says tenderly, brushing my cheek with a fingertip. “Try it.”

I raise a forkful to my mouth and whimper with raw pleasure. The icing is buttery and weightless and sweet all at once, the cake spiced with nutmeg – Peeta’s favorite, and mine too – and the orange curd is sheer bliss: bright and juicy as an orange should be, but smooth and _creamy_ at the same time. My tongue can’t comprehend what it’s tasting, but it wants more – _so_ much more.

“Good, I take it?” Peeta teases as I cut another forkful and let it melt on my tongue, savoring each one of its lush flavors with little sighs and moans. “Dad makes dozens of these every April. We peel so many oranges that our fingers smell of them for weeks,” he laughs. “Mom makes us wash our hands twice before kneading so the breads don’t all taste like orange.”

I imagine Peeta’s strong hands scented with oranges for weeks on end and feel an echo of the hot lurch in my belly from earlier. I hope he doesn’t mean to make this cake often. A Merchant wedding cake, and his fingers fragrant with orange…There’s a good possibility my body might combust.

I wonder if he’s ever made this cake for his sweetheart, or if he means to, and the thought sours the bite in my mouth. Of course he will. She’s a Merchant girl – deserving of a Merchant wedding cake – and he’s a baker’s son. He could woo her with cakes alone, if he wanted – and at the very least, he’ll bake for their wedding day. Fine white bread for toasting vows, and a cake to feed each other before the fire.

 _But she’s not here now,_ I think. He’s loved her as long as he can remember; even won the Games for her sake – and yet he shares his New Year’s feast and this precious wedding cake with two Avoxes and a Seam girl.

It’s a bitter thought, but it enables me to finish my slice, and when it’s gone Peeta shyly places a little butcher paper packet – _my_ butcher paper packet; the one I made last night to hold his honey buttons – on the table beside my plate. “I’d have loved for this to be in your stocking this morning,” he says. “But for obvious reasons, it had to wait.”

I smell cinnamon and orange before I’ve even opened the packet and wonder, though I know better, what sort of game he’s playing. Inside are thin strips of our New Year’s orange peel, now a clear, pale gold, encrusted with fine sugar.

“I candied it to make a sweet,” Peeta explains, a little breathlessly. “I simmered it in our leftover cinnamon tea, and it’s supposed to dry for a day or two but I wanted it for tonight, so I cheated and dried it quick in the oven and –”

“It’s perfect,” I assure him, closing a hand around his, and it _is_. Our New Year’s tradition of cinnamon and firelight and one perfect orange, captured in a sweet that can be eaten at any time and bring back that moment in every exquisite detail. I wonder if I should eat them all at once and linger in that moment for as long as possible or save them for the days that lie ahead, filled with blonde braids and laughter and curly-haired children.

“Half of them are yours, right?” I say. “If we share an orange, that means sharing the peel too, right?”

Peeta shakes his head with a crooked smile. “I ate all your honey buttons,” he says. “I thought this might make an even exchange.”

“It was _your_ honey that I used to make them,” I remind him.

“This was _your_ orange,” he replies.

 _Our_ orange, I think fiercely; _our_ tradition, and I resolve to find ways to share these little treasures with him. “At least have one with me now,” I say, and Peeta agrees without hesitation. We each bring a sugared golden strip to our mouth and share a sigh of pleasure as we bite down. The orange peel is tender between my teeth and achingly sweet, tempered perfectly by strong notes of cinnamon tea. I know little enough about the sweet-shop’s confections, but I doubt _anything_ they make could surpass this.

“You should make these for your sweetheart,” I suggest, without bitterness, caught up as I am in the heady flavors of candied orange and cinnamon flooding my mouth from just one tiny piece of peel.

Peeta’s eyes soften. “Maybe I already have,” he murmurs; a whisper of spiced orange, close enough to smell but not to feel on my skin. “And of course I will. Again and again.”

Pollux and Lavinia are already clearing the table before Peeta and I have left it, and though both insist they don’t require – or, I think, _want_ – any help, it’s Peeta’s kitchen, and he’ll hardly leave its clean-up to others. The four of us make short work of the dishes and parceling up the remainder of the food, then Lavinia all but propels me toward the living room.

“Right on schedule,” Peeta calls from behind us with a laugh. “Presents by the fire.”

There are more spiced beeswax candles inside, I note with a smile, and evergreen boughs too, framing the windows and the huge stone fireplace. Peeta’s air of festivity clearly spilled over from the dining room this evening.

Pollux and Lavinia take the armchairs again, leaving Peeta and me the sofa. “It’s my turn to play Father Christmas, I think,” Peeta says, throwing a wink at Pollux, and he bends down to collect and distribute the gifts lying beside the hearth. I’m surprised by how many make their way to me, even after seeing the labels earlier, but my attention is focused almost entirely on the muffler in its hiding place. Will Peeta notice it among the parcels as not having been there earlier? Will he guess it’s from me?

When he finally picks it up, I hold my breath till my lungs burn and watch him turn the parcel to find the name of the recipient. When he does, his eyes narrow a little – in puzzlement, I think, not anger – and he looks directly at me.

 _Well, obviously,_ I think. _Who else would have wrapped a New Year’s gift in butcher paper?_

“Another present, Katniss?” he wonders, setting the crude package on the low table as carefully as if it were made of glass. “You gave me a whole stockingful of them earlier.”

“It’s…a New Year’s surprise,” I answer feebly.

“You’ve given me too many already,” he says quietly, setting a small, cube-shaped parcel on the table in front of me. “I’m not sure I can handle another.”

We start with the gifts for “Peeta and family,” all of which clearly came from the bakery: a box of beautifully iced cookies, two golden loaves of the very best bakery bread, and what must be one of Marko’s famous pies. A custard pie, I think, capped with a crust of what looks like burnt sugar, and Peeta moans with eagerness at the sight of it. “ _Buttermilk pie!_ ” he cries, not unlike a delighted child. “This is just…you have _no_ idea…hold on a minute!”

He springs from the sofa and sprints out to the kitchen, returning seconds later with a handful of forks. “I just _can’t_ ,” he says, taking a forkful of custard and crust from one edge of the pan and devouring it with a groan of pleasure.

I try – and fail – to imagine how amazing a pie would have to be to affect Peeta like this.

“You _have_ to try this,” he insists, eagerly proffering forks and the pie pan. “I know you’re probably not hungry at all – I’m not either – but this… _this_ …” He trails off into inarticulate exclamations, making me laugh heartily.

“All right,” I concede, and scoop up a second forkful next to the one he ate. The crust crumbles on my tongue, as flaky and perfect as Marko’s reputation claims, and the cap of caramelized custard is so sweet it makes my teeth ache – but that doesn’t stop me taking another, greedier bite.

“ _See?_ ” Peeta says, taking another bite for himself. “Now that you’ve tried Marko’s pie, you’ll see that mine don’t even compare.”

“This _is_ amazing,” I admit, stealing a loose bit of crust from one edge before passing the pan to Pollux. “But I’m happy with the baker I have.”

Peeta smiles up at me, and to my surprise he doesn’t blush at my words. “That’s because he lives to bake for you,” he murmurs. “He chases you around the house and showers you with fresh bread and cookies all day long.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” I murmur back, and our fingers tangle briefly over the sofa cushion.

While Pollux samples a few curious bites of Marko’s pie, Lavinia hops up from her armchair with a little cloth sack that I hadn’t seen her bring in and takes out a red stocking cap with a crest of sorts at the top, like a cardinal’s, and wide black bands on either side for lacing beneath the chin. She slips it on my head with a quick kiss to my cheek and grins widely at the picture I make.

“A cardinal!” Peeta says with a happy little laugh. “Lavinia, that’s _incredible_!”

“You made me a present?” I say, and she nods eagerly. Clearly, it wasn’t only me who crafted things in secret this month. I feel bad that I don’t have something for her in return, but she shakes her head in response to my unspoken words and bends to give me a hug. _Accept a gift freely given,_ her arms say, and I nod against her shoulder with a quiet, “Thank you.” I’m not good at this, not at all, but I have a feeling I’ll get plenty of practice at it tonight.

She turns to Peeta next, producing the bright blue stocking cap she was working on the first day she invited me up to her attic. It’s crested like mine, only with black ear flaps, and it fastens with white bands beneath the chin. “A blue jay!” I exclaim, and Peeta grins as Lavinia pulls it over his curls, with a kiss to the tip of his nose for good measure.

“I love it,” he says, leaning up to give her a hug. “Thank you so much.”

She turns to Pollux last of all, who is watching her intently, the pie forgotten in his lap. The last cap from her bag is russet brown and has no crest, only cream-colored “cheek patches” and a black chinstrap. She glances back at Peeta and me with raised brows, awaiting our guess. “A sparrow,” I say.

The plain, friendly bird, so common to Peeta’s garden, seems especially fitting for Pollux, who practically lives outside and shares his roof with a sleigh-pony, and the drab colors suit his fair skin and vibrant, ruddy beard. She carefully eases the cap over his thick, sandy hair, not playfully as she did with Peeta and me, and bends down to press a kiss to his bearded cheek. She doesn’t offer a hug and he doesn’t try to claim one, but his eyes are wide when she pulls away and follow her back to her armchair.

Once she’s seated, Pollux gets up and hands Peeta a bulky square parcel from among the gifts on the low table. “This is from you?” Peeta says, raising his brows, and Pollux gives a vigorous nod in reply.

Pollux is clearly a finer carpenter than I realized. Beneath the brown paper wrap is a hinged box with a handle on top, all raw wood but skillfully pieced together. Peeta opens the lid with a gasp of awe to reveal a shallow tray with several dividers, which lifts out to reveal a compartment below. “Pollux,” he breathes. “You made me a paint-box.”

Pollux nods again, blushing a little, and Peeta turns to me to explain, “I kept wanting to take paints outside with me last summer – to go into the woods or down to the lake and paint things as I saw them – but I’d have to carry them on a baking sheet or something and it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. This is _perfect_ ,” he tells Pollux, his voice brimming with admiration and gratitude. “You know you didn’t have to do this.”

Pollux shrugs and makes the hand-heart gesture, the one he makes so often to or in reference to Peeta, and Peeta gets to his feet to seize him in a hug. “Thank you so much,” he says. “You take such good care of me – _both_ of you,” he adds to Lavinia, peeping his blue-crested head around Pollux’s shoulder.

“ _All_ of you,” he says softly, letting go of Pollux and looking back at me. I wonder if he’ll still feel that way when he opens my gift: a crude thing of animal skins and feathers, nothing like the beautiful presents Pollux and Lavinia made for him.

Pollux leaves the room then and I glance after him, wondering if Peeta upset him somehow by mentioning Lavinia and me in his response to Pollux’s gift. “Don’t worry,” Peeta says, settling beside me on the sofa again with a broad, almost giddy grin. “I think you’re about to discover why you couldn’t go in the workshop for the past two days.”

I see the gift before I see Pollux – it’s _that_ large, and he has to guide it through the doorway ahead of him – and I stumble up from the sofa cushion, my mouth agape. It’s a tanning frame; a sturdy, handsome one, not unlike what Granny Ashpet used in my dream for her bridal doeskins. My deerskin is laced into it by dozens of thin cords, anchoring it to the frame on every side.

This is _exactly_ what I need for processing my deerskin – _Peeta’s_ deerskin. However optimistic I felt that day after the hunt, I know now that there’s no way I could successfully stretch and tan that precious hide without this wholly unexpected gift.

I remember my lament while skinning the young buck – how I wished for a frame large enough to fit its skin, and Pollux merely quirked a brow in reply – and I realize he probably started on this weeks ago, as soon as I first mentioned hunting a deer for New Year’s. This is why he insisted on cleaning up for me that afternoon; on hanging the fresh deerskin to dry. He had the frame in place already, probably hiding in Peeta’s cart, and would have spent an hour, probably two, just lacing the deerskin into it. _For me._

I run across the living room and seize him around the middle in a rib-cracking hug. “Pollux, you stupid boy,” I cry, grabbing fistfuls of his sweater to prevent my hands from flailing at his back. “Why would you _do_ something like this?”

He loosens my grip at his waist with a throaty chuckle and gently holds me back at arm’s length. He rests his palm over his heart, then places it over mine.

“ _Oh_ ,” I whisper, and shrug off the hands on my shoulders to hug him again, less fiercely this time.

I’m not accustomed to being loved; it confuses and even frightens me a little. And Pollux and Lavinia are supposed to love _Peeta_ : kind, gentle, generous Peeta, not cross, impatient, feral Katniss. I don’t understand what there is in me that they can think to _love_ , but their affection is as great a gift as the cardinal cap and tanning frame they crafted for me…maybe even _greater_.

I think I might love this burly, red-bearded man who teases and provokes me as I imagine a brother would and yet helps and looks after me like the closest of friends. He’s rapidly become what Gale used to be: a hunting partner and friend, albeit gentler in nature and quicker to laugh and smile. “Thank you,” I tell him, a tear-dampened sigh against his sweater. “For everything.”

Pollux takes my face in his hands and kisses the crested top of my new cap with a crooked grin, then he chases me back to the sofa. He has one further gift to give, of course: a square parcel, much like Peeta’s, that he places in Lavinia’s lap, and I have a fairly good guess as to what it might be.

“Something for knitting, I bet,” I murmur to Peeta as Lavinia tears open the heavy brown paper, and he nods in reply.

“Count on it,” he whispers back. “You’re not the only one he adores.”

It turns out to be a hinged box; very similar to Peeta’s, albeit broader, and where Peeta’s sectioned tray was empty – awaiting charcoal and brushes and paints – these are filled with knitting needles and small scissors, and the compartment below is piled high with skeins of fine yarn in deep, vibrant tones. The kind that costs as much as two loaves of bakery bread.

I’ve long assumed that Pollux and Lavinia receive wages of some kind, but this gift will have made a substantial dent in Pollux’s income, no matter how well Peeta pays him – and Lavinia appears to understand that only too well. Her eyes are narrowed as she looks up from the costly yarn in her lap, and she touches her lips with one hand in her usual gesture of thanks. Pollux gives her a nod in reply and raises a hand to brush her cheek. He doesn’t attempt a hug or a kiss, and she makes no move to offer them.

Beside me, Peeta gives a quiet chuckle.

“What was that for?” I whisper, looking between Pollux and Lavinia, seated in their respective armchairs once more, and Peeta shakes his head.

“The dance,” he says cryptically. “Sometimes I wonder whose benefit it’s for.”

I shake my head at this, thoroughly at a loss, but Pollux and Lavinia are progressing on to their other gifts, and Peeta gestures for me to watch. There seems to be a certain order to this business of unwrapping presents, however perplexing, and I settle back onto my sofa cushion to oblige.

There are gifts for both from Peeta, of course: new boots for Pollux; sturdy and fleece-lined, and a handsomely tailored coat of midnight-blue wool for Lavinia. Neither is a particularly necessary gift – what they have already is well-made and as good as new – but each is uniquely suited to the recipient’s needs and demonstrates Peeta’s perpetual thoughtfulness. The insulated boots are ideal for the amount of time Pollux has been spending in the snow lately, and the coat gives Lavinia something pretty and practical to wear outside and on her trips to town.

There are also small square parcels for both of them from Prim, which shouldn’t surprise me, and both turn out to be bars of handcrafted soap, which doesn’t surprise me at all. I laugh as Pollux turns the cream-colored bar in his hands and wonder if my sister has taken it upon herself to ensure that everyone in the district shaves their beard this winter.

It’s my turn for gifts next, apparently, and Peeta hands me a broad, shallow box wrapped in dishtowels. “I think I know what this is,” he says with a chuckle, and I draw the cloth back to reveal a crate filled with twelve jam jars, with a tiny pie baked into each one and a note lying across their tops:

_Dear Katniss,_

_By now you’ll have sampled my famous buttermilk pie and declared that you still prefer Peeta’s baking. This comes as no surprise – or, for that matter, insult – to me, but Prim is insistent that my pie-making skills get a fair trial. To which end: she’s selected her twelve favorite recipes, sweet and savory, which are here for your tasting pleasure._

_Enjoy, or not.  
_ _Marko Mellark_

I pass the note to Peeta, who has guessed at its contents and is already laughing. “He _is_ the pieman out of all of us,” he reminds me. “You’ll at least _try_ them, right?”

“Of course,” I assure him with a grin. “I just refuse to prefer them to yours.”

Next up is an envelope, heavy with coins, and I open it to find more money than I’ve ever held in my life, along with a scribbled note in heavy black ink; written on butcher paper, no less:

_Katniss –_

_Thank you for the venison parcels. Everything sold within minutes of being unwrapped, and I have no doubt that the blood sausage I’ll put out tomorrow will go likewise. I’ve sent you payment in kind, which should have made its way to my nephew’s icebox, as well as a portion of the profits. Peeta’s a good boy and I know he must be spoiling you with gifts of all kinds, but he forgets that trading women such as us like to have a little coin tucked away for a leaner day._

_I_ _f you get another buck, I would be over the moon to take a portion of it._

_Yours,  
_ _Rooba Brognar_

“Do you know anything about a parcel from the butcher shop?” I ask Peeta, and I look up from the letter to find him grinning from ear to ear.

“I almost cooked half of it this morning,” he replies, “but that would have ruined the surprise – and it was _yours_ , after all, so I didn’t want to assume. She sent two pounds of thick-cut bacon, a dozen of those sage-and-apple sausages, a nice ham steak – and not a thing for her own flesh and blood,” he adds with a good-natured laugh. “I guess there’s something to be said for this business of paying people back for their kindnesses.”

To be honest, I hadn’t expected payment of _any_ kind from Rooba, and certainly nothing so lavish. I’d simply wanted to share a portion of our New Year’s deer with Peeta’s kin: with the woman who was responsible for teaching him to cook meat, no less, which education I benefit from at least three times a day.

I wonder if I’ve been living with Peeta long enough that I’ve started acting like him. Giving valuable things to others and expecting nothing in return…Maybe it’s not so impossible that I might one day be able to accept such gifts freely.

I reach next for the gaily striped sweet-shop box. I’d half assumed it was from Prim and am startled to find it labeled _From Madge._ “Madge?” I puzzle. “Why in the world would she send me a New Year’s present?”

“Because,” Peeta answers gently, “you’re friends, and I have a sneaking suspicion she misses you. Before you two started sitting together at lunch and things, she was always off on her own. I imagine she’s a little lonely without you.”

I think of quiet golden Madge for a long moment. I’d never even considered her a friend till she brought me clothes to wear to Peeta’s house and stole the last bite of ginger cake from my plate – till she _told_ _me_ we were friends. We talked so little, and rarely about anything but schoolwork. Does she really miss my company?

I lift the box lid to find two little rounds inside, wrapped in gold foil and nestled in bright purple tissue. “Sugar plums!” Peeta exclaims.

I know sugar plums from the sweet-shop window but never, _ever_ thought I would eat one. They’re among the most expensive of the shop’s confections and only available between the Harvest Festival and New Year’s.

My father and I used to collect sacks full of wild plums at the end of summer and sell them to the sweet-shop and, sometimes, the bakery. The woods of Twelve is rich with wild plums; _from old homesteads,_ Dad told me once. Before the Dark Days – _long_ before Twelve was surrounded by wilderness – there were many homes and families on this land, and with them came fruit trees. Both the homes and families are long gone, of course, but many of the fruit trees remained as the wild woods grew up around them, and the tenacious plums flourished.

The sweet-shop paid well for those plump little fruits. They wanted them for sugar plums, of course, which I used to think were just fresh whole plums dipped or glazed in sugar, but when I asked Mom about it once, she shook her head with a merry laugh.

 _I used to think that too,_ she said. _They’re a sort of comfit. They dry the plums and combine them with other fruits and spices and sometimes nuts, then they seal them up inside a hard sugar shell._ As a Merchant child – and later, a Merchant’s sweetheart – I suppose she had many opportunities to sample the costly sweets.

“I think I’ve had three of those in my entire life,” Peeta says, eyeing the two foil rounds wistfully, and I hand him one without a second thought.

“Katniss, no,” he protests and tries to hand it back, but I close his fingers around the wrapped sweet and push it firmly toward him. “I certainly don’t need _two_ ,” I tell him. “And clearly, you love them. It’s yours.”

“You’ve given me too much already–” he begins, but his words trail off at the conviction in my eyes. “Okay,” he says, very quietly. “Thank you, Katniss.”

The next item is wrapped in what appears to be old school papers, and I unwind them to discover that’s exactly what they are: Rory’s Hawthorne’s schoolwork, written on the cheapest paper that Seam families can buy. Frugal Hazelle answered my letter on the blank backs of her son’s school papers.

What she’s sent are hasty but thorough instructions for tanning a deerskin, from fleshing to smoking. She could be arrested just for having written this, and what lies at the center of these pages could get her whipped, even executed. It’s a slender piece of wood, its ends worn satin-smooth by decades of use, with a long, blunt blade embedded at its center. I’m certain I’ve never seen such an implement before, and yet something about it is oddly familiar.

Wrapped around the middle of the strange tool – weapon? – is a scrap of finer paper: the blank bottom of the letter I sent Hazelle, trimmed off and reused for her reply. Its message is brief:

_This is your Granny Ashpet’s hide scraper. Jack gave it to me after she died, but I know he would have wanted you to have it._

“Oh,” I whisper. “ _Oh._ ”

I take the tool in both hands, my fingers closing around its smooth ends in disbelief. I know _exactly_ what this is now – and why I recognized it. Granny Ashpet used this tool – this _very_ tool – to flesh her bridal doeskins in my dream. A shiver wriggles its way up my spine, but it’s a feeling of anticipation; expectation, even. This is the sort of thing that happens in many of the oldest tales: someone – a dead relative or sometimes a fairy – appears to the hero or heroine in a dream with some sort of instruction, and when they wake this impossible instruction leads them to a tool – or weapon – that changes the course of their future.

My huntress grandmother has led me to one of her most prized tools, which she used to process the doeskins that would become her wedding dress. What does this mean for me?

I look up into the silence to find Pollux, Lavinia, and Peeta all watching me with identically rapt expressions. “It’s my grandmother’s,” I explain, lifting the scraper between my hands and angling it to show them the blade. “Granny Ashpet’s tool for cleaning deerskins. Dad gave it to Hazelle when his mother died, and now she’s giving it to me.”

“That’s _incredible_ ,” Peeta gasps, half-reaching to touch the wood, then thinking better of it. “She must have made it herself, and…Katniss, this is _amazing_ ,” he says. “For her to give it to you now, when you’ve just shot your first deer…it’s like your grandmother’s trying to teach you things from, well…beyond the grave.”

 _She is indeed,_ I want to tell him. Perplexing, unsettling things, and I’m not sure they’re all to do with hunting, even though she speaks of them in that language.

_It’s not always bad for a huntress to be caught. Especially when she loves her pursuer._

_How can you strike the heart of a young buck without piercing either lung, and yet you cannot see what lies directly before you?_

But such thoughts are edged with bearskin coverlets and firelight, and I sidestep them to open my final presents. There’s a bar of creamy soap from Prim, flecked with lavender buds and pine needles and smelling deliciously of both, and a knitted shawl, the color of Grandma Lydda’s spiced wine, from my mother. Made of the same deep-toned, silky yarn that Pollux bought for Lavinia, skein after costly skein of it; it’s almost large enough to wrap around me twice.

Mom knitted this for me, night after night after night. _To keep you warm in the woods,_ says the note pinned neatly to one corner. My eyes mist with stubborn tears.

Mom and I haven’t communicated much at all since I came to live here. She included a short, strained note with Prim’s second letter, asking if everything was all right and Peeta was treating me well – which of course was her way of asking if he was using me, physically, as a part of our bargain. I hadn’t forgotten her distress the night I left home, for fear that such was what awaited me – nor my own fear on those first uncertain nights in Peeta’s house – and I wrote back as delicately as I could that Peeta was everything kind and respectful and simply wanted my company.

Her reply, while short, was markedly relieved and maybe even a little affectionate.

She hasn’t written since, except for a line or two at the end of Prim’s letters every now and then, sharing something about the apothecary shop, but what lies in my lap is better than a hundred letters full of tender words. A tangible declaration of her love to wrap around me, like my rabbit-skin baby bunting sixteen years ago.

Peeta’s thumb gently catches a tear on my cheek. “You okay?” he murmurs, and I nod numbly in reply. I drape the shawl around my shoulders with a small, stifled sob, then I reach for the last two parcels.

First is a large flat envelope, identical to the one Peeta sent to Mom and Prim, with the beautiful sketches of me playing in the snow. I catch my breath in anticipation, eyes flickering to Peeta, and he gives me a bashful smile. “I have a bit of a confession to make,” he says. “I made eight of those little pictures. Seven of them went to your family, but I kept my favorite for you.”

I slip the picture from its wrapping with unsteady hands. It shows me sitting on the bench beneath the rose trellis in my bright red coat, scattering golden peanut butter cookie crumbs over the snow for a small mourning dove, its plumage painted in velvet shades of dusky brown and gray.

Just three days after being saved from starvation myself, I shared a portion of my food with a wild creature.

I’m not surprised that Peeta kept this most precious picture back, and even with it held securely between my hands, I want it so badly that my heart aches. “I _love_ it, Peeta,” I say, gripping the edge of the heavy paper with desperate fingertips. For the first time I notice the scrawled _PM_ in the lower right hand corner, half-hidden by the shadow of the garden bench. “I love it _so_ much.”

“I’ll get a frame for it, then,” he says. “Or maybe Pollux can make one.”

Pollux nods at this, but my eyes are drawn back to Peeta. He seems happy that I like the picture but… _nervous,_ somehow. Distracted, even. I pick up my last present; the small wrapped cube, and hear his breath catch. I can’t imagine _any_ sort of gift that would make him so anxious, not when he’s given me furs and fine clothing and the richest food imaginable without batting an eye, and I peel back the paper with a worried frown of my own.

It’s a small decorative box, the sort that Merchant girls use for little keepsakes, skillfully painted to look like the night sky. Blue-black, with patches of brighter blue, and everywhere pinpricks of white and silver stars.

 _Would you paint something for me sometime?_ I asked him yesterday, and he replied, _Maybe I already have._

It’s a stunning gift, made with exquisite care and far, _far_ too fine for me, though I love it already and will cherish it for the rest of my days, even if I have nothing worthy to keep inside it.

“Katniss,” Peeta says raggedly. “ _Open_ it.”

I look at him in surprise and find him white-lipped, almost trembling. Surely this fine, precious box _is_ the gift, not merely its container? “ _Please,_ ” he says.

I tease the seam of the lid with a fingertip and carefully ease the little box open. I anticipate a special sweet, a feather; an acorn, maybe. Something little and endearing.

Inside, nestled upon a bed of cloud-gray tissue, is a pearl. Silvery-white as the moon and as big as the nail on my little finger, anchored on a fine silver chain.

“ _Peeta…_ ” I breathe, and promptly run out of words.

Jewelry is a luxury beyond the imaginations of most people in Twelve. Merchant women wear pretty brooches or pins on very special occasions, but Seam folk are lucky to afford a ring for their wedding day. My father, passionate as he was about music, sold his beloved dulcimer to buy the cheap silver band that circles my mother’s ring finger.

What Peeta has just given me could probably buy wedding rings for every couple in the Seam.

“Is…is it all right?” he rasps. “I…it’s meant to be like the moon in your dad’s tale: ‘a tiny pearl in the sky.’”

My heart stutters at hearing my father’s words on Peeta’s lips, let alone those particular ones. “You remember that?” I whisper.

“ _Every word,_ ” he whispers back.

I look down at the pearl in my hands, lying in a cloud-bed within a box of night sky. At how perfectly Peeta captured an image from a story he only heard once – and then made a gift of it to me.

 _Katniss…you’re the moon,_ he said to me earlier this evening. Is that how he sees me: as the huntress moon of my father’s tale? Is that why he gave me this precious jewel, packaged with such deliberate care and attention to detail?

“If you don’t –” he begins, but I don’t let him get any further than that.

“I love it,” I say, grasping his hand. “I _want_ it.” _I don’t deserve it,_ I add silently, _not at all,_ but my longing for that tiny iridescent moon resting in the hollow of my throat overrules any such protest. I absolutely can’t accept such a gift, and I want it too much to refuse 

I lift the pearl from its cloud-bed with shaking hands and open the clasp on the chain, but before I can raise it to my neck Peeta’s fingers are on mine, easing it from my grip. “Please, let me,” he says.

I tug off my new stocking cap – it feels childish and out of place at this moment – and sweep my hair over one shoulder, turning my back to Peeta and staring into the flames of the hearth. My heart is racing; toward something or away from something, I can’t be sure, and then I feel Peeta’s fingers brushing my skin, guiding the chain around my neck and clasping it at the nape, and I sigh into his touch. Warm breath and a fleeting softness join his fingers; a tangible, wordless whisper against my neck, just above where the clasp lies, then he takes the sleek fall of my hair in both hands and draws it gently to spill down my back once more.

 _This is no pearl,_ I think; _no ordinary jewel from a Merchant’s shop window_. It’s a bead of pure moonlight; a fairy’s treasure, as pale and luminous against my dusky skin as the moon herself against the night sky, and I wonder how Peeta managed to capture it. Did he lie in wait for moonbeams in the woods, like a boy in an old tale, and catch one in a magic jar? Or did he simply sit by the lake one night, strong hands outstretched patiently, and the moon came to him on silver skates to give him a piece of herself?

I wonder if she loves him, this boy of cream and honey and warm golden sun.

I turn back to Peeta and take his sweet face in my hands. “It’s too much,” I tell him, my voice breaking. “ _Far_ too much, but…but I’ll take it, if you want.”

“It’s _all_ I want,” he whispers, stroking the pearl with one gentle fingertip, his eyes soft with awe. “All I’ve _ever_ wanted, Katniss.”

He reaches for his own gifts then, and it’s my turn to be nervous. There’s a bar of soap from Prim, of course, and two parcels from his family: one contains clothing, I think, and the other dishes or kettles, but I can’t focus on anything but the muffler in its butcher paper wrap. Peeta’s clearly saving it for last, and that’s not what I wanted; not at all – and especially not now, when he’s just hung the moon around my neck and all but begged me to accept it. My gift to him is _animal skins_ , and not fine ones either, like bear and deer and fox: _rabbit_ pelts, plain and common as mud, clumsily stitched together and stuffed with feathers from a wild goose. Peeta has finer fur than that on his bedroom floor.

I have a good mind to snatch it away and promise him a different present instead. Rooba gave me plenty of money for the venison; I can send some with Pollux or Lavinia the next time they go to town and have them bring me back a proper gift for Peeta.

There’s only the wrapped muffler left on the table now, and Peeta reaches for it carefully, as though it might crumble to nothing or flee from his hands. I should watch him open it but I can’t – _can’t_ – not after all he’s given me today. Instead I fuss with the night-sky box; _the moon nest,_ I think madly, tracing patterns on its painted lid. _Are you the bear and deer made of stars,_ I ask the pinpricks of brightness, _or the children of the sun?_

The butcher paper falls away with a soft hiss and takes with it all the air in the room. “Katniss,” Peeta says. He’s as near as my left hand but his voice is muffled and distant, as though there are many miles and a snowstorm between us. “ _Katniss._ ”

I don’t look up. I can hear in his voice that he’s not pleased. Its sweet sound is rough, even _broken_ , apparent in just those two meager syllables of my name. He’s confused. Horrified. Maybe even offended.

“ _Katniss_ ,” he says again, and the sound is more ragged still. A plea.

I look up to find the loop of fur held between his hands…and his eyes red and welling with tears.

This gentle boy filled my New Year’s with luxury: oranges and skis, a painting of me, and the moon on a silver chain, and I gave him an old sock full of foraged things and a muffler made of dead animals – that made him _cry_. For all I know, he feeds the rabbits too, and I’ve just given him over a dozen of them, their fleet, soft bodies reduced to patches of fur to wrap around his neck.

Tears burn in my eyes too. “I’m sorry,” I choke. “I should’ve known it was a bad gift. I just…it’s a muffler,” I explain, though he can’t possibly care. “To keep your neck warm when you wear the bearskin, a-and…I filled it with down from those geese–”

I’m don’t know how it happens, but suddenly I’m in his arms – in his lap – held in a crushing embrace as he presses his wet face to mine. The muffler lies in my hands; a heavy loop of dense winter fur, plush with down, and I curl my fingers greedily around its softness.

“Katniss,” he sighs, again and again, as he rocks me against him. “ _Katniss_ …my huntress…You dress me in fur.”

“I want to take care of you too,” I whisper in reply, wiping the tears from his cheeks, and he turns a little to kiss my fingers.

“So you skinned and tanned and sewed for me,” he marvels, and he brings my other hand to his lips to cover its fingers with kisses as well. “I’ve never been given anything so precious,” he says, “except, maybe, the night you agreed to come here, or the night you chose to stay.”

“It’s only rabbit skins,” I demur, but weakly. His words are tugging at my heart; loosening it from its place like a spade at a stubborn root. One good sharp pull and it will slip cleanly from my chest into his hands, for him to do with however he pleases. To grate or roast or feast upon whole – or replant in new soil of his own.

“ _Your_ rabbit skins,” he reminds me. “You could have kept them; made something for yourself.”

“But I don’t need anything,” I reply. “Except to keep you warm.” _And safe,_ I add silently. _So safe, my sweet boy._

I tug off his new blue jay cap, mussing his curls a little in the process, then I fold the muffler in half and slide the double-loop over his head. He moans at the feel of its fur against his skin, and I smooth his curls with an apologetic hand. “See?” I say, tugging one layer up to cover his mouth and nose. “It’s much better than my dad’s scarves.”

“It is,” he murmurs through dense winter fur and plush goose down, and he bends to press his forehead to mine. Rabbit fur brushes the lower half of my face and I nuzzle my nose against its softness – and the bridge of Peeta’s nose buried snugly beneath.

“Just promise me,” he says, tugging down the muffler so his words are clear: “No more gifts, Katniss.” Above the heathered gray-brown fur, his eyes are damp but grave. “I can’t…you’ve given me so much, and this best of all,” he says. “It’s too much. More than I can bear.”

I wonder for the briefest moment if this is a delicate way of telling me he doesn’t like my gifts and doesn’t want any more of them, but of course I know better than that. Peeta loved his stocking of foraged things and shoe filled with pine chips, and impossible as it is to believe, he cried over the muffler for the same reason. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll treasure it and put it to use at once, like the crude wooden spoon from his stocking that served a portion of our supper.

As incomprehensible as it is, Peeta treasures _everything_ I give him, be it a gift of fur or fresh meat or just a squeeze of the hand. I can see that now, and it only makes me want to give him _more_ : to overwhelm him with furs and foraged foods and little gestures of affection.

My eyes flicker over his shoulder to Pollux’s fine tanning frame and my deerskin laced at its heart. I envision wrapping Peeta in the supple golden leather it will become and turn my face to hide a smile. “No more gifts,” I promise, my lips brushing the velvet of his waistcoat with each word. “At least, not tonight.”

“Well, then,” Peeta says, clearing his throat. “There’s just one thing left to do, isn’t there?” He looks up, nodding to Pollux, and gently sets me back down on the cushion beside him. “New Year’s ends the same everywhere, right?” he asks quietly.

He gets up from the sofa and goes to the doorway to lift down the kissing bough. Of course. Distributing the ribbons and burning the bough, signifying the end of New Year’s.

He returns with the bough in his hands and Pollux follows after, carrying a second bough; Rye’s bough, I think. He must have brought it in at supper.

They set both boughs on the low table with a certain air of festivity. “Since Pollux shares a roof with Rye, I figured he should do the honors with Rye’s bough,” Peeta says with a crooked smile. “You remember how this works, right?” he asks him.

Pollux gives a small nod and deftly unwinds both ribbons. Like the ones on Peeta’s bough, they’re at least two feet in length and made of fine, glossy satin. Merchant ribbons, for a Merchant’s daughters and sweethearts.

He takes the white one in his hands and walks over to me. My mouth drops open like a fish’s.

I’ve never received a ribbon of any color, except from my father, and I never expected to. A friendship ribbon is, to some, less exciting than a sweetheart ribbon – it’s just a token of esteem, really, and no one ever wears them the next day – but Merchant ribbons are costly, and Pollux only has two. Both are equally valuable.

He proffers the ribbon, a little uncertainly, and I get up to hug him for the third time tonight. The last white ribbon I ever received was from Dad, just weeks before he died, and this unexpected gift means more to me than Pollux – than _anyone_ , I think – can possibly imagine.

Pollux drapes the ribbon around my neck with a playful grin – _my friend,_ I think, _as sure and sound as the white satin lying against my skin_ – then he leans in to press a kiss to my cheek.

 _Red for sweethearts, white for friends,_ _and always exchanged with a kiss._

His mouth is soft, in contrast to the bristle of beard surrounding it, and his cheeks are pink when he pulls away – as, I imagine, are mine. This wasn’t a true kiss, of course, but it’s the first I’ve ever received from a man who wasn’t my father.

Pollux returns to the table to pick up the red ribbon and his eyes flicker to Lavinia. Something in their gaze makes me catch my breath – anticipation? longing? a warning? – then he walks over to her and holds out the ribbon, lying across both palms like a bright seam.

I’m hardly wise to the nuances of body language, but Pollux’s message is clear. He’s offering the ribbon, but if Lavinia wants it, she has to take it from him. I wonder what else he’s offering with it.

Pollux isn’t from Twelve, but he’s clearly been told the nature of these ribbons and the significance of their distribution. _You’re not the only one he adores,_ Peeta said.

Lavinia stares up at him for a long moment but makes no gesture, no expression; nothing to indicate her response. If Pollux knows about the ribbons, _she_ must too. Is this her way of saying no?

 _It’s bad luck,_ I want to tell her, for Pollux’s sake, but I doubt such a warning will have any impact on a girl who’s lost her tongue and her family and lived the life of a Capitol slave.

She rests her white hands on the arms of her chair and slowly gets to her feet. Then she takes two deliberate steps, closing the distance between her and Pollux, and tips her head a careful fraction of a degree to kiss the corner of his mouth, where his lips meet his beard.

When she draws back, catching up the ribbon in her slim fingers, neither of them is blushing.

They return to their respective chairs as though nothing happened, and I wonder if, despite the strange edged thing I saw in their gaze, nothing _did_. Surely they’ve both kissed others before, countless times, and this was merely a New Year’s kiss. A bit of fun to salute the holiday’s end. Merchant boys and girls exchange such kisses in the street and hurry on to another pair of lips without a second’s thought.

Lavinia loops the red ribbon loosely at her throat, like a scarf – like cloth – and all at once it occurs to me, with the force of a thunderclap that pierces your eardrums and shakes your house to its foundations. _Cloth._ Seam families that are even poorer than mine tie red and white rags around their kissing bough instead of ribbons. Scraps of cloth.

Peeta wears a scrap of red cloth at his wrist; has worn it six months now. A token of his sweetheart – _or from her,_ people said.

I don’t know how I didn’t realize it sooner. Maybe because it’s so impossible.

A Seam girl gave him that. A Seam girl with colorful rags on her kissing bough and no father or brother to claim the red one for his sweetheart.

Peeta loves _a Seam girl._

A great fist closes around my heart, crushing it to dust.

No wonder he’s been so slow and careful in his courtship. If she’s anything like me, her pride would force her to refuse his gifts – or at least, insist on repaying him for them by any means possible. Maybe I’m the trial run, to see what it takes to win a Seam girl; to see what she wants and likes. If Peeta can make feral, angry Katniss Everdeen content and happy, any other girl will be supple as dough in his skillful hands.

No wonder I envisioned him with a black-haired, blue-eyed daughter.

I draw in a shallow breath and it slices through my lungs like an angry fistful of knives. I can’t breathe but I need to; I need air but it _hurts_. It hurts so badly to take it in.

Peeta’s on his feet now, going to Lavinia with his white ribbon. _It’ll be striking against her red hair,_ I think, but I’m not really paying attention.

_A Seam girl._

_A_ Seam _girl._

Peeta’s pearl should go to her. A treasure like that could feed her starving family for a year. I should offer that right now; should take it off and give it back to him, for her sake, but I can’t. It’s _mine._ _My_ perfect bead of moonlight, hung around my neck by a golden boy with the sun in his touch and his voice and his eyes.

My _boy!_ rails a voice in my head. _Mine to feed and warm and protect._

 _Little Katniss,_ Granny Ashpet replies, _how can you strike the heart of a young buck without piercing either lung, and yet you cannot see what lies directly before you?_

“Katniss,” Peeta says, his voice soft and very near.

I look up, hot-eyed and broken all over, to find him standing in front of me with a red ribbon in one strong hand. “Happy New Year,” he whispers.

A Merchant bridegroom, offering a sweetheart ribbon to a Seam girl on New Year’s Day.

I can’t play this game anymore. Can’t be the girl he practices on with his rich gifts and delicious food and tender touches. Can’t care for him so much, bringing him wild gifts from the woods and wrapping him in furs and skins I tanned myself, when I’m only here to prepare him for _her_.

“It...it goes in your hair, right?” he says hesitantly. “May I?”

I hate him, I think. This sweet, gentle boy, whose kindness is the worst sort of cruelty. Cradle a girl in your arms and feed her with your own hands. Warm her feet with your kisses. Put a jewel around her neck – and then set her aside and do the same for the real girl. The one you want.

The one you _love_.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. I’m not looking at him anymore – _can’t_ look at him anymore – but his voice is hoarse and full of grief. “I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

The ribbon droops at his side, a gesture heavy with defeat, and my right hand reaches out of its own volition to close around it.

Red satin and warm fingers. My ribbon. My boy.

 _I don’t care,_ I tell myself firmly – and I realize that it’s true. I’ve always known about Peeta’s sweetheart; what difference does it make that she’s from the Seam? It’s New Year’s night in a fairytale house in the woods, and Peeta Mellark is offering me a red ribbon. My rabbit skins are looped around his neck and I wear his pearl at my throat. In this moment, no one and nothing else matters.

“Yes,” I tell him quietly. “It goes in my hair.”

I stand up quickly and turn my back to him. My hair isn’t braided tonight, for him to weave the ribbon through the plait, so I expect him to just pull it back in a long tail and tie it with the ribbon. But instead I feel cool satin at my brow and gentle fingers at the back of my head, and I realize he’s tying it like my father: like a wreath of bright berries, encircling my head like a crown.

He turns me back to face him, and my heart loosens another degree at the smile curving his lips. A soft, radiant, disbelieving smile. “Beautiful,” he murmurs, adjusting my ribbon crown a little, and his fingers brush the wintergreen sprig at my temple. “ _So_ beautiful.”

He lowers his hand and turns to pick up the bough; to set it on the fire and signify the end of New Year’s.

“Wait,” I croak. “Don’t you want your kiss?”

The bough slips from his hands, hitting the hearthstone with a sound like rain. His shoulders are rigid; his eyes wide and his face white to the lips. “What did you say?” he whispers.

I don’t know why I said it. It’s tradition, of course: _Red for sweethearts, white for friends, and always exchanged with a kiss._ But Peeta’s not my sweetheart, nor am I his. Surely no kiss is necessary for this ribbon to be exchanged.

“It’s bad luck,” I add in a rasp, and wonder why I can’t keep my mouth shut. Peeta doesn’t want to kiss me and _I_ certainly don’t want to kiss _him_. All this harping on about it is clearly making him uncomfortable.

“That’s only if I ask and you say no,” he says, his voice tight and strange.

He’s right, and I’m flooded with shame at the reminder. It sounds like I’m asking for a kiss, which of course I’m _not_. I don’t want to kiss him. And he obviously doesn’t want to kiss me.

And here we are: a perfect fairytale New Year’s filled with feasting and laughter and gifts, ruined in one fell swoop because Katniss Everdeen clumsily tried to uphold a tradition.

I look at him: at the flicker of firelight on his fair skin and my precious rabbit skins at his neck, and the words fall out, naked and unbidden and painfully true. “Please, Peeta,” I whisper. “I _want_ to.”

I don’t know why – can’t begin to _imagine_ why – it should matter at all, but it _does_. At this moment, more than food or air or shelter from the cold, I want – I _need_ – to kiss Peeta Mellark.

He stares at me, his lips parted slightly and the blue of his eyes swallowed up by the black of his pupils, as I step over the fallen kissing bough to reach him. “This is my first kiss,” I tell him quietly, toying a little with the loops of fur at his neck. I mean it as an apology; a warning, even, but his eyes go wider still, as though I’m offering something precious beyond price.

“You promised, Katniss,” he rasps. “No more gifts.”

 _My first kiss,_ I think wryly, _wrapped in a red ribbon and given to Peeta Mellark on New Year’s Day._ As though a kiss from me could be a gift to _anyone_ , let alone him.

“It’s not much of a gift,” I say, “but it’s yours if you want it.”

“ _Yes_ ,” he whispers, startling me with the hushed force of his response. “I want it.”

I stare at his lips for several moments. I’ve felt them on my hands, my fingers, the crown of my head, even my feet; warm and soft and sweet. And I kissed his hand the night I learned about him buying the shop for Mom and Prim. There’s little enough in a kiss, I suspect, and less still in a New Year’s one, however necessary it is to exchange.

So what am I waiting for?

I curl my fingers around the fur of his muffler, close my eyes, and lean up to press my mouth against his.

I only mean for it to last a moment; a quick touch of lips and away again, but Peeta’s mouth softens under mine and it feels so _good_ , so impossibly good, that I tighten my fingers on the muffler and press closer still. His big hands catch at my waist, holding me to him, and all I want in all the world is more of _this_. This boy and his hands and his mouth, so warm and soft and sweet against mine. The musk of his body fills my lungs; I taste spiced wine and orange peel on his breath.

He draws back then, just a little, but enough to break the kiss. Without the anchor of his lips I melt back to the floor, but he keeps one hand at my waist, holding me close, while his other hand goes to my face, to stroke my newly kissed lips with the firm pad of his thumb, again and again and again. “Oh, Katniss,” he whispers, his eyes dreamlike and soft with wonder. “Your mouth is a scarlet ribbon.”

I gasp at hearing these words from his lips; these lips that I kissed just a heartbeat ago. They’re lovers’ words, fanciful as fairy tales and perhaps even older in origin. Surely the brawny, gentle baker never sang them to his bitter wife. I wonder if Peeta learned the song from Grandma Lydda, along with her breathtaking winter tales, or if, like so many in Twelve, he heard it sung on a festive night by my father.

I wonder, a little madly, if this is why ribbons are exchanged for kisses. I’d always thought it an unfair trade – give a costly ribbon and get a mere kiss in return – but surely a red ribbon for a scarlet one makes an even exchange…

“So…can I burn the bough now?” Peeta murmurs. “Or was there more you had in mind?” His eyes are dark and warm as a summer night, and I find myself wanting to curl up in their depths. To nest in that deep, drowsy blue and sleep the year away, only to wake again next New Year’s and do the whole wondrous thing all over again.

I blush a little at the direction of my thoughts and step back to retrieve the bough for him. One ribbon equals one kiss; Peeta knows this as well as I do, and there are no ribbons remaining on the bough. I wonder whether I’ll get another one next New Year’s, and what his mouth will taste of then.

The bough meets the flames with a quiet hiss, and Peeta crouches by the hearth for a moment, stirring the wood till the new branch catches fire. And with that, New Year’s – with all of its feasting and gifts and rare magic – is over.

I’m a little melancholy at the thought, as I was back when my father was alive and the end of New Year’s meant countless long dark evenings without him at home – but why should I be? None of us goes to a job in the mines tomorrow. We’ll all be here; back to “work” as usual but also feeding birds, playing in the snow, sharing grand meals – and each other’s company – as much as we want. Life in this fairytale place is like an endless holiday, and I for one am greedy for more of it.

“Thank you,” I tell Peeta as I collect my gifts, keeping the painting and the night-sky box closest of all. “Thank you for the most incredible New Year’s.”

“No, thank _you_ ,” he says, coloring slightly as he brushes my cheek with his fingers. “You’ve spoiled me with gifts, Katniss, and I’m _begging_ you for a little respite.”

I consider the deerskin in its frame once more and smile. “It’ll be a good month, at least,” I estimate.

Pollux and Lavinia exchange hugs with both of us before going their separate ways, and Pollux traces the red ribbon-wreath across my brow with a little smile. I offer several times to help carry the deerskin back to the workshop, but he insists on taking it himself, along with Granny Ashpet’s hide scraper. _Kept you away for two days,_ he writes. _I can do this much._

I turn for the stairs myself, to follow Lavinia up, but Peeta draws me back for a last lingering hug of his own, with an armful of presents between us. “I don’t want it to be over, Katniss,” he confesses against my forehead, cradling me close with both strong arms.

“It isn’t,” I tell him, “not really,” but I know he’s right. There was an undeniable magic to this day: to our meals, the skating, these gifts – not to mention our New Year’s orange, and what came after.

I doubt Peeta will ever share my bed again, no matter how I plead. Not even next New Year’s.

“Sleep as late as you like,” he murmurs, and it lessens the sting a little.

“Always,” I murmur back.

By the time I reach my room, Lavinia has already turned back the covers, put the warming pan beneath them, and laid out my nightgown: the festive one, patterned with chickadees and pinecones and little red berries, in which I spent the better part of the day. She seems in a strange hurry to turn in for the night, and every few seconds she raises a hand to the red ribbon at her neck, to stroke the ends with her slim white fingers.

Lavinia’s not from Twelve, no more than Pollux, but she’s clearly been affected by the ribbon exchange. I wonder what it meant for her to get that red ribbon – for him to offer and for her to accept – and how it felt to kiss a man with a beard.

I wonder if, in winters to come, Peeta will grow a beard like his father and brothers. I wonder how different it will feel to kiss him then, his soft mouth encircled with downy tufts of pale gold.

Lavinia doesn’t offer to brush and braid my hair or even help me into my nightgown, and I don’t ask her to. She presses a distracted kiss to my forehead and leaves, barely a minute after I’ve arrived, with an apologetic half-smile.

When she’s gone, I sit at the dressing table and look at myself in the mirror. Mom’s wine-red shawl wrapped around my shoulders and a dress of luminous gray silk beneath it. Peeta’s ribbon encircling my head like a crown, bright as berries against my black hair, and Pollux’s ribbon draped about my neck, crisp and white as a frozen river. A sprig of wintergreen at my temple and a pearl on a silver chain, moon-pale and glowing against my olive skin.

I am a strange fairy creature tonight: a New Year’s maiden, all black and red and green, illumined with whispers of silver and moonlight. And I have never felt more cherished – or more beautiful.

I touch my mouth with my fingertips, foolishly expecting it to feel different, somehow. _Mine is a kissed mouth now,_ I realize, _or rather, a_ kissing _one_ , and blush a little at the thought. I may have no sweetheart, and most likely never will, but I have undeniably given away my first kiss – and before witnesses, no less.

I decide here and now that Prim never, _ever_ needs to know about that.

I carefully remove all of my New Year’s finery and gifts, save for the pearl, and change into my nightgown. The wintergreen sprig goes into my drawer of precious things, along with Prim’s soap, Pollux’s ribbon, Lavinia’s cap, and Mom’s shawl. I prop Peeta’s little painting up on my dresser, using the night-sky box to hold it upright, so I can see both from my bed. Then I brush my hair and braid it loosely, twining Peeta’s red ribbon around the middle strand.

I’ll wear the ribbon in my braid tomorrow, of course; it’s what’s done in Twelve. Girls weave their red ribbons into their braids the next day and boys tie them round their sleeves, as a sort of badge of honor. I may be no one’s sweetheart, but I’ll wear Peeta’s ribbon proudly.

Last of all I reach under my bed for the final gift of the night: the rabbit-skin pillow I made for my companion and tucked inside Dad’s sweater for safekeeping. It’s a humble gift, much like Peeta’s muffler, but more luxurious than anything I could have imagined before living here. I wonder whose head will lie on it tonight, cushioned by plush winter fur and a deep layer of goose down.

I lay it at the top of my companion’s side of the bed, near the edge, where I imagine their head lies each night, then I do all the usual little things for their comfort: moving the warming pan to their side, turning back the covers. I glance up at the pillow now and again as I do so and realize it looks drab in the firelit dimness of my room, especially among the other, finer furs and golden deerskin pillows.

Resolved, I go to my drawer of precious things and untie the red ribbon from the spile Peeta gave me. It’s a proper ribbon, long enough to tie around the center of the pillow and give it a little festive air.

 _Red for sweethearts, white for friends..._ I have no idea who my companion is, but our curious relationship – our shared slumber, the little comforts we provide for each other – is more intimate than that of friends, even without talking or touching or interacting in any way. It’s unlikely that they’ll know about the ribbon tradition, but if they do, a sweetheart ribbon feels most appropriate.

I press a kiss to the center of the pillow, right over the red ribbon, and get in my side of the bed. I’m not tired in the least, owing to my nap in Peeta’s arms, and I want more than anything to hear my companion’s reaction to the pillow, but somehow sleep seizes me anyway… 

* * *

 

_It’s an earlier time, or perhaps a later one. A future I can barely imagine, where the town square is blanketed with pure white sugar-snow and Merchant children frolic through it without care, making snow angels and snowmen and eating little white heaps from their mittened palms._

_One boy stands off by himself, working on a snowman of his own. He wears a heavy coat of white fur and a muffler of heathered gray-brown furs about his neck: rabbit skins, from the woods. I wonder who made such a thing for a Merchant boy, whose father has money for fine wool and leather. Who loved him so much to hunt and skin so many rabbits, to tan their hides and make a garment of them to keep him warm._

_I wonder if he knows how beloved he is._

_I come closer and discover that he’s not making a snowman but a snow-_ girl. _A beautiful young woman, lifelike in every way from the shoulders upward, with a small nose, wide cheekbones, a stubborn little chin, and a long braid lying over one slim shoulder. He shapes her lips with a pocketknife and dusts them clean with his breath._

_“Your mouth is a scarlet ribbon,” the boy whispers, tracing the snow-girl’s lips with a fingertip, then he tugs up his coat sleeve and carefully unwraps a scrap of worn red fabric from about his wrist. I’ve seen this cloth before. The boy kisses it when he’s alone, sometimes with tears on his face. He lays it now across the snow-girl’s finely carved mouth and it contours to the shape of her lips, turning them the color of living flesh._

_With a little sigh, the boy presses his lips against the girl’s lips of scarlet and snow, and I come to life beneath his mouth._

_It begins as a quiet warmth, radiating from the place where our mouths meet. A slow, steady thawing; not the painful sort that follows frostbite but a gentle spring thaw, characterized by trickling water, willow catkins, and brave tiny blooms. Before my eyes is a haze of deep blue, white, rose-pink, and gold –_ dawn _, I think, then the boy draws back a little and I realize the colors were_ him _: the rose and cream of his fair skin, the blue of his eyes, the gold of his lashes and his thick soft curls. All the beauty of sunrise in one boy’s face._

_“That was my first real kiss,” he says, stroking my cheek with a fingertip. “I’ve been waiting a long time to give it to you.”_

_He opens his coat of fur with a sigh and wraps it around me, drawing me into the radiant heat of his strong body. His mouth is like a spring morning, warm and wet and sweet with nectar and blossoms, and I bring my own to it again and again, desperate for more._

_I’m made of snow, or at least I was when this began. Cold, lethal, easily broken. And everywhere that this boy and I touch, I feel warmth – sweet, drowsy waves of it, stemming from our mouths and our hearts and our hips where they press together – but I’m not melting. I should be dying from such heat, and yet I’ve never felt more alive._

_The boy breaks our kiss and looks down at my body, blushing deeply. Where moments ago I was made of packed snow and crudely shaped below the shoulders, now I have arms, a torso, hips and legs; even feet, buried to their ankles in the snow, and yet I feel no cold. The body of a young woman, dusky-skinned and slender, with proud little swells of breasts._ Two wild plums, _I think, small and firm and tipped with dark buds._

_The boy brings shy fingers to the curve of one tiny breast and my body presses into his touch, like a bough burdened with fruit and ripe for plucking. “So beautiful,” he whispers, even as ruddy color flames at his cheeks and throat. Something flickers in my belly in response, but it’s a pleasant heat: the wet warmth of a spring thaw, leaving the earth damp and soft and eager for seed._

_I wonder what this boy will plant inside me._

_I’m naked in his arms, seeking his kisses and aching for his touch, but these are only the outward signs of the true wonder he’s wrought here. Just moments ago I was made of snow, with no more feeling than the drifts from which I was formed – and content in it. Content to be a creation of water and cold wind: still and somber, unloved and unloving._

_But with one kiss, this boy has given me flesh and blood, complete with the yearnings and hunger that are part and parcel of such a nature. To move; to touch and feel in turns. To love and be loved – even make love, wrapped in bearskin and sweet sighs and the warmth of this boy’s body – of_ both _of our bodies now. I can feel the frantic race of his heart against mine, even through his clothing, and wonder if it will be likewise when we lie together, all tangled limbs and damp hollows and mouths meshing in moans._

_Flames bloom in my own cheeks at such thoughts, but I am astonished only, not ashamed. With one kiss, this boy made me human._

_With one shy press of lips, he kissed me to life._

* * *

 

I wake with a quiet start to the sound of sobs from the opposite side of the bed. Rough, ugly, wracking sobs, fighting their way from someone’s chest, and so deep that they shake the bed a little.

My companion is here. They found their gift – the pillow that took hours of work and dozens of rabbit skins to complete, to say nothing of the goose down – and it’s made them _cry_.

I curl tightly on my side and bury my face in my pillow, fighting tears of my own. How could I have been so _wrong?_ I wanted to make my companion happy; to show how much I care for them. I know the pillow was a crude sort of gift, but they seemed to like the stocking of foraged things and the bird’s nest of sweets – and they left me a sprig of wintergreen in return; something I’ve _never_ been able to locate in the winter woods, neither here nor nearer to town. I had thought them uniquely attuned to the woods, even beloved by it. Why should a rabbit-skin pillow be such an upsetting gift, let alone for one who comes every night to a bedroom of fur and pine and wild rock and lies between sheets of deerskin?

After an endless, agonizing span of minutes, full of wet gasps and whimpers and shallow, shaky breaths, their sobs at last begin to ebb and I feel them get up; a quick shift of weight on the mattress. I hear their feet, heavy and stumbling over the pelts, as they come around to my side of the bed. _This is it,_ I think. They’ve come to scold me for this terrible gift – or perhaps for presuming to give them a gift at all. I know I’m not supposed to know about them to begin with, and before last night I had left them only small edible things; snacks at bedtime, such as anyone might appreciate. But this is clearly the worst gift I could have provided, and now I’ve ruined everything just by trying to offer something special.

I bury my head deeper in my deerskin pillow. I don’t want to see my companion’s face and especially not at this moment. I’m not sure I _ever_ want to know who they are, but I definitely don’t want to discover it as I lose them, and _this_ , forever. Maybe they’ll leave me alone if they think I’m asleep – or just move on to a different bedroom.

They give a deep sigh, almost a moan, and a hand settles on my head. I tense in anticipation but it’s a caress they’re offering; a tender brush of fingers over my loosely braided hair. A friend’s touch, or a lover’s.

I feel lips against my hair then; ragged breaths and the dampness of many tears. My weeping companion is _kissing_ me. Once, twice; their lips press the crown of my head and linger there, and I feel the warmth of their breath on my scalp.

 _They’re not angry,_ I realize in wonder, nor saddened by my gift. It moved them to tears – and to give me these kisses. But _why?_

 _Red for sweethearts, white for friends,_ I recall, _and always exchanged with a kiss._

They kissed me because they’re _supposed_ to. I tied their pillow with a red ribbon. Had I intended it as a sweetheart’s token?

 _Are you my sweetheart?_ I ask them silently. _Will you wear my ribbon tied around your sleeve tomorrow?_

Their hand eases toward the nape of my neck to stroke the length of my braid; once, twice, then they draw it gently to lie over my shoulder, their fingertips brushing the skin of my neck in the process and making me shiver with pleasure. They make a small choked sound; another sob, though I can’t imagine why the sight of my braid by firelight would affect anyone like that, then they press a final kiss to the crown of my head and return to their side of the bed.

I listen as they undress, as they turn back the covers and remove the warming pan, and as they rest their head on the rabbit-skin pillow for the first time. They settle onto the bed with a sound that’s half a sob and half a moan: the sound of a cheek meeting fur, I hope. Of unexpected bliss.

As their breath slows with sleep, I stare into the hearth and ache to dream – of ribbons and kisses and oranges, of pearls and paintings and fur – but my slumber is soft and silent as a midnight snowfall. _Perhaps because this New Year’s was a fairy tale in itself,_ concedes my subconscious mind with a begrudging yawn, _and no dream could ever hope to surpass it._

I wake in the cold gray light of a winter dawn, alone as always, with my right hand curled beneath my chin. Tucked snugly inside, as though by a benevolent fairy or Father Christmas himself, is a perfect orange, with a red ribbon tied around its center.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone hasn’t guessed, I love fleshing out backstory and cultures and sneaking in nods to folk and fairy tales and even myths wherever possible. Such oral traditions would be even more precious in a dystopia like Panem, and I see Katniss’s father and Granny Ashpet (both of whose names are deliberately taken from Appalachian folklore, Ashpet being the Appalachian Cinderella and Jack the hero of a whole school of tales :D) and Peeta’s Mellark grandparents all being rich sources of such lore.
> 
> On a related note, the “old folk song” that appears throughout this chapter, described by Katniss as “lovers’ words, fanciful as fairy tales and perhaps even older in origin”: 
> 
> How lovely you are, my darling  
> How beautiful, my love  
> Your eyes are like doves  
> Your teeth are like sheep  
> Your mouth is a scarlet ribbon
> 
> is a simplification of Song of Solomon 4:1-3(NIV translation):
> 
> How beautiful you are, my darling!  
>     Oh, how beautiful!  
>     Your eyes behind your veil are doves.  
> Your hair is like a flock of goats  
>     descending from the hills of Gilead.  
> Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn,  
>     coming up from the washing.  
> Each has its twin;  
>     not one of them is alone.  
> Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon;  
>     your mouth is lovely.
> 
> Ghtlovesthg and I had a great conversation about how the Song of Solomon would persist indefinitely on the whispers of lovers, even and especially in a dystopia like Panem, and who better to pass it on than Katniss’s father, with his rich heritage of songs and tales?  
>    
> In writing about New Year’s, I wanted to create a “corruption” of Christmas that was canon-compliant and believable yet still contained clear threads of the (secular) Christmas holiday as we know it, albeit with a Panem “twist” (ex. Father Christmas leaving a shoeful of coal and stockingful of sweets for children in the coal-mining district, the Victory Tour aspect of his journey). To the best of my knowledge, Twelve’s tradition of kissing boughs and the ribbon exchange is my own invention (with an obvious connection to mistletoe, of course), and I’m a little besotted with the idea. :D


	12. Of Braids and Brides: Part One (January)

_**A Winterlude** _

_She never saw him, however, for he always came after she had put out her light,_  
_and went away before daylight appeared._  
~ _East of the Sun & West of the Moon (Østenfor sol og vestenfor mane), _  
by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, edited by Andrew Lang

***

_"My life is very monotonous," [the fox] said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."_

_The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time._

_"Please - tame me!" he said.  
__~ The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, translated by Katherine Woods

I sit in bed for a long while, turning the precious orange over and over in my hands and letting its red satin tails slip between my fingers. As I learned last night, everyone in this house knows what red ribbons mean. My companion has given me a sweetheart’s token; tucked it into my hand, even, so I would discover it as soon as I woke.

Between the red ribbon and the tear-dampened kisses that my companion pressed to my hair last night, I can rule out Lavinia…but then, I’ve always known, deep down, that it wasn’t her. For one, my bed partner is simply too heavy – and heavy-footed. I’ve shared a house with Lavinia and a bed with _them_ for a month now; I know the sound and rhythm of steps, as any hunter should, and how much the mattress gives at their weight, even when I’m two arm-lengths away from my companion’s body. Also, Lavinia’s response to the wintergreen sprig – _it’s about time_ – made it clear that, while she may be aware of my companion’s presence, as I’ve long suspected, she’s not that companion herself.

Not to mention, if Lavinia truly wanted to share my bed, she would never have bothered with secrecy. She would have crawled beneath the covers, as casually as Prim does, and pressed a kiss to my cheek before curling up behind me like a kitten and, likelier than not, burrowing cold toes against my calves.

No, my companion is not Lavinia and, more to the point, it’s not a girl. For the past month, I’ve shared this bed of fur and deerskin with a _man_.

I suck in a skittering breath at the realization. Up till now I’ve thought of my companion as sexless: a comforting presence, like a warm shadow. A body that might grow cold or hungry or lonely – but neither male nor female in nature. But the ribbon-wrapped orange, compounded with last night’s kisses – in answer to the ribbon-wrapped pillow I left out for _them_ – drives home what I should have guessed at once from my companion’s weight and footsteps.

As a child, I often took naps with my father after a Sunday morning in the woods, sometimes even in the shack by the lake, if we’d set out very early and the day was warm. Before Prim was born, Mom says, it wasn’t uncommon for me to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and crawl in with her and Dad – or for Dad to steal me out of my bed while I was sound asleep and tuck me in between them, so he could cuddle me through the night. Mom loved us, of course, but Dad was the one who had really wanted children, and his mining job left precious few hours for him to enjoy with his girls. And I was his favorite: _my little catkin,_ he crooned as he nuzzled my hair and cradled me in his strong arms. _Spun from starlight and sparrow-song; from winter and wildflowers and will-o’-the-wisps._

But of course, there’s a world of difference between my father and the silent stranger who shares my bed in this place, covering me with furs and leaving me presents – and pressing kisses to my hair as they weep over the gift that I left for them. And unless there’s a mysterious fifth person living on this property who I have yet to encounter, my companion can only be one of two people – the likeliest of which, I decide, is Pollux.

Pollux knows that I love oranges, maybe even that they mean something special to me. He would have gone to the mercantile before New Year’s to buy knitting needles and yarn for Lavinia’s sewing box, and he might even have been the one who bought the ribbons for Peeta’s kissing boughs to begin with. An extra red ribbon would have cost him less than one knitting needle.

All in all, Pollux is the closest to a waking version of my companion: a silent, considerate man who sees to my comfort without – for the most part – interfering with my business. And he lives minutely closer to the woods than the rest of us; maybe he spotted the elusive wintergreen during our deer hunt and went back on his own to cut a sprig for me on New Year’s Eve.

Pollux likes me well enough; _loves_ me, even, if what he conveyed last night in gestures – and the priceless gift of the deerskin tanning frame – is to be believed. Twice now Peeta’s remarked that Pollux _adores_ me, but I can’t see anything romantic in his manner. He’s a good friend, almost a _best_ friend, but surely not a sweetheart. If he gave me a red ribbon, it must have been in error or friendly jest.

And really: would he leave his comfortable loft above the stable, night after frigid night, to trudge over to the house and crawl in bed with me, only to leave a few hours later without any sort of interaction at all? Pollux may be silent and considerate, but he’s also mischievous and playful. If he really _is_ my companion, he’d have done something to give it away by now.

But if Pollux isn’t my companion, that only leaves one possibility. The person who knows better than anyone what oranges and red ribbons mean to me – and the person it absolutely _can’t_ be.

Or _can_ it?

I think back to my unspoken half-wish for someone to share my bed on that first strange night in this house. Peeta’s proven that he knows what I want before I ask for it, sometimes before I even know it myself. Could he have anticipated my longing for a bed partner and fulfilled it _himself_?

I look across at the opposite side of the bed: at the fur-and-down pillow that still lies where I placed it last night, though any indent of a head has been carefully brushed away, and I envision Peeta lying there. Strong, blond, handsome Peeta, removing every last garment and climbing so carefully beneath the covers to lie beside me. Peeta spreading an extra fur over me and tucking the covers around my body every morning when he leaves to bake bread and cook my breakfast. Peeta weeping at the gift of a rabbit-skin pillow and pressing teary kisses to my hair in response to the red ribbon I tied around it.

It isn’t hard to imagine – because I’ve _seen_ Peeta do almost all of these things before. Wrapping me snugly in his bearskin when I sleep on the sofa. Weeping at the gift of a rabbit-skin muffler. Pressing kisses to my hands and feet and the crown of my head – even lying down with me for a little yesterday afternoon, when he carried me up to bed for my nap and I refused to let him go.

Suddenly my heart is beating so hard and fast that I can barely breathe, and I don’t understand why. If Peeta _is_ my mysterious companion, sharing my bed every night, there’s a practical reason for it. He comes from a large family, after all, and it’s likely that he shared a room, if not a bed, with one of his brothers before moving out here. He might simply be lonely for company at night – or perhaps, knowing that I used to sleep with Prim, suspects that _I_ am. It’s a bit odd that he wouldn’t have mentioned it to me – or asked me if I mind, even though it’s quite clear that I _don’t_ – by now, but likelier than not, he thought that saying something would just upset me, as though he were revealing a weakness of mine.

Whatever Peeta’s reasons for sharing my bed, there’s nothing affectionate or romantic in it. He _has_ a sweetheart, as I know only too well: a Seam girl that he’s loved for as long as he can remember, for whom he chose and outfitted this house – and whose red rag-ribbon he wears at his wrist.

 _But then why,_ whispers a voice in my head, _would he give you an orange – the very token of your shared New Year’s celebration – and tie it with a red ribbon?_

I look at the orange in my hands; sunny and perfect, with its trailing tails of red satin, and feel my heart give a trembling skip. Peeta’s a Merchant boy: he knows only too well what red ribbons mean. Pollux might have made a joke of it, but district folk don’t give a red ribbon to someone they aren’t sweet on, not even in jest. Money is too thin, even in Merchant families, and proper kissing bough ribbons are very precious – in some cases, as good as a pledge. If this ribbon _is_ from Peeta, the sentiment behind it is real.

And if this ribbon is “real,” so is the one he gave me last night beside the living room fire. The one he untied from his kissing bough and wrapped around my head like a crown, the way my father used to do for my mother.

The one I kissed him for.

I bring a hand to my kissed mouth, my breath and mind racing. Red ribbons for sweethearts –  _and always exchanged with a kiss._  Peeta gave me a red ribbon at the close of our festivities last night and I kissed him in return, then I went up to bed, plaited his ribbon into my braid, and tied another red ribbon around the rabbit-skin pillow for my companion. When Peeta – assuming it  _was_  him – joined me later, he wept over the gift, even harder than he had at the muffler, and pressed kisses to my hair in return, and before he left this morning he gave me an orange with yet  _another_  red ribbon tied around it.

 _Either I have two sweethearts,_ I think wildly, my heart drumming in my ears, _or a single, very devoted one._

It’s impossible, of course. Completely, utterly impossible. Peeta loves his Seam girl: the girl who gave him the scrap of red cloth; the beautiful girl that a lot of boys like. If anything, his affectionate gestures toward me are just practice for wooing her. For learning the moods and manners of a Seam girl, so as to make her more at home when she finally comes here as his wife.

He doesn’t mean anything unkind by it, of course; quite the opposite. He wants to ensure that his girl will be comfortable and happy here – and in the process, does everything in his power to make _me_ comfortable and happy. And when all is said and done – when Peeta’s wife finally joins him in this beautiful place – he certainly won’t throw me out. I’m his huntress now, as much a part of the household as Pollux and Lavinia, and will probably move into the simple spare bedroom across the hall so his wife can have this lavish woodland room for herself.

None of this is upsetting or even particularly surprising…except for the red ribbons. Unless he has a deep-seated cruel streak that he’s never shown, not even in his most desperate hours in the Games, Peeta Mellark wouldn’t give a girl a red ribbon unless he wanted her for a sweetheart.

 _No,_ I tell myself firmly, almost angrily. _You know better. He probably did it as a sweet gesture, assuming you’d have got red ribbons from admirers if you were still living in Twelve._ A ridiculous assumption, of course, but likely enough for Peeta, who persists in telling me that I’m beautiful. He probably thinks I have flocks of suitors back in town, like my father always said I would, all eager to tug my braid and offer a red ribbon and beg a kiss.

I run my fingers down the length of my braid, stroking the precious ribbon-strand I plaited into it before bed last night, and realize all at once that there’s a clear and simple answer to this unsettling puzzle. The day after New Year’s, it’s customary to wear the red ribbons you were given. Girls thread them into their braids and boys tie them around their sleeves.

The red ribbon I tied around the rabbit-skin pillow is gone. If Peeta is indeed my night companion – and content to call himself my sweetheart – he’ll have that ribbon tied around his arm this morning. If he doesn’t, the ribbon he gave me at the close of our festivities yesterday is simply a gift, as I had taken it for at the time – and my companion, impossible though it may be to imagine, is someone else. Pollux or Lavinia – or the gentle white bear from my dreams.

I throw back the covers and hurry to my dresser to choose clothes with trembling hands. If Peeta is waiting downstairs with my red ribbon around his arm, I want to look…well, _nice_ for him _._ If he loves me – obviously, he _doesn’t_ , but if he could…if he _does_ …

 _He_ doesn’t, _you little fool,_ chides the cold, clipped voice of reason, which sounds unsettlingly like Peeta’s mother. _And he never will. Loving you would be like loving a wild thing, all teeth and claws and bristling black fur. He loves a beautiful Seam girl with red rags on her kissing bough and a horde of hopeful admirers, not a Seam girl with many-times-reused satin ribbons that have never left her house – and no admirers at all._

I know this to be true, every last bleak word of it – and yet it doesn’t explain the red ribbons. If anyone speaks the language of sweethearts, with its nuances of gift-giving and tenderness and pretty words, it’s Peeta. Peeta, who feeds chipmunks and wild birds and knows when to offer a girl rich, delicious food and when to wrap her in furs; when to tease and cajole her to merriment and when to cover her bare feet with kisses. Everything Peeta does is considerate and carefully thought-out, whether it’s preparing a dish for our table or bringing Avoxes to live in his house, and his family is steeped in lore and tales and tradition. He knows every possible implication of a red ribbon at New Year’s – a declaration of admiration or attraction, an offer of affection or request for it, a pledge of love and faithfulness – and will have anticipated that one or more of those meanings would resonate with me. He can’t have known which idea would prevail, no more than I do at this moment, so he would have had to think through – and _mean_ – _all_ of them before he would even consider putting a red ribbon in my hands.

Admiration. Attraction. An offer of affection and a request for mine. A pledge of faithfulness.

_Love._

My lips curve upward in a slow, tremulous smile, and I wipe it away with my forearm. My forearm, which is covered in festive ivory flannel, all chickadees and pinecones and little red berries. The nightgown Peeta bought for me to wear at New Year’s…with a slim red ribbon at its neck, tied in a neat bow just below the pearl he gave me last night.

Another red ribbon.

I wonder if I should go downstairs just like this: a red ribbon in my braid, another at my throat, and the third tied around the precious orange in my hand, and walk up to Peeta and… _and what?_ wonders a voice in my head, my own this time. _Tell him that I’m his, ready to be loved and coddled and filled with babes, and he is mine?_

 _Mine_. My heart had growled it without hesitation as I crouched atop him in the snow, shielding his powerful body with my small one. _My boy,_ I called him silently as he offered me the rarest, most precious gifts at his fireside – and in my dream as well, when my womb was golden and heavy with his fawns.

Of course, Peeta _isn’t_ mine – my boy, my lover, my mate – nor will he ever be, but if he _were_ …if he _could_ be… I consider this and tremble with strange, pleasant shivers. I don’t want him, neither as sweetheart nor husband, but if he were mine, I would go down to that kitchen right now, in my nightgown and sleep-mussed braid, and wrap my arms around him from behind as he fries up griddle cakes for my breakfast. I would nestle my face against the strong planes of his back and drink up his musky warmth with parted lips, and when I was full of him he would laugh and lift me up to sit on the worktop, and I would curl my legs around his waist as he fed me bite after bite of sweet griddle cakes and crispy bacon and toast dipped in a soft yellow yolk.

I’d still hunt and carve and tan hides, but I’d be in no hurry to leave the house when breakfast was over. If Peeta were mine – and of course he _isn't_ , nor do I want him to be, but if he _were_ – I could spend a whole morning on the sofa – or better still: in the armchair, on his lap – smoothing his plump, downy curls with my fingers and kissing the foolish smiles from his mouth.

I laugh a little, too giddily, and tug open my sweater drawer. I need to strip the hair from Peeta’s deerskin today – _graining_ _the hide,_ I think Hazelle called it – and thus should dress in my oldest clothes, but if Peeta is downstairs with my red ribbon tied around his arm, to show up like that would be ridiculous and almost insulting.

I glance over at the other dresser, with its drawers full of dresses and skirts. Surely something pretty would be better suited to the occasion, but then if – _when_ – Peeta isn’t wearing my ribbon, I’ll look like a complete idiot. For me to come down for breakfast in a _dress_ would occasion plenty of curiosity and comments, even if Peeta _didn’t_ guess the reason behind it – and then I’d have to come back up to change into Dad’s sweater and my old corduroys for working on the deerskin, which would raise even _more_ comments.

I turn back to my sweater drawer and draw out the slim-cut, oatmeal-colored turtleneck that Peeta bought for me to wear hunting, the one woven with rabbit hair amid the wool for extra warmth and softness. It’s entirely too fine for the sort of work hunting requires and I’ve yet to wear it, even once – but perhaps it will serve for today. It’s lightweight but warm; ideal for tanning days when I move often between the chilly workshop and the cozy stable, and it’s pretty enough, as garments go. It’ll skim my slender form like the heathered plumage of a song thrush.

I wriggle out of my nightgown with a shiver. Lavinia’s put out clothes for me already: the thick forest green sweater and coffee-colored corduroys I wore on my first day here, along with underthings of fine gray linen patterned with embroidered lavender buds. I slip on the bra and underwear with furiously flaming cheeks and forbid myself to think of Peeta in this context, even if I’m wearing the sort of underthings that would be fit for the huntress-moon herself, with her starry black hair and dusky skin.

 _Katniss…you’re the moon,_ Peeta whispers in my mind as his warm fingertips circle the luminous pearl at the base of my throat, and half-naked as I am, I don’t want to hide my body from his gaze. I love how our skins look together – our hands entwined against the tweed of his sofa or the wood of his dining room table, like sunlight and shadow – and I consider how much lovelier it would be for bare limbs to wind and tangle and torsos to meet. Peeta’s skin is fair and rosy, and I think of tracing his arms from wrist to shoulder with unhurried fingers, lingering at the downy patches of honey-pale hair, then following the contours of his collarbones to the musky hillock of muscle that is his chest. I’ve seen glimpses of it beneath his wrestling uniform, all rose petals and cream, and again in his Games, painted with browns and golds into the very embodiment of a wedding toast, and I wonder which image is truer now. My sun-boy…surely he is more gold than pink beneath his clothes.

I blush hotter still and pull on the corduroys, then the soft turtleneck sweater; sighing as I do, as it whispers over my skin like a blanket of chick’s down. The sweater Lavinia laid out for me is well enough, but I’ve worn it several times already, and the other is clearly an expensive garment and one that Peeta chose carefully, both for function and appearance. It’ll please him to see me in it.

Not that I care about pleasing him, not in that sense. Not at all. I don’t choose what to wear based on his approval or admiration. I don’t seek for either, nor will it make any difference to me should I receive them.

I settle at the dressing table to tug on a pair of stockings and give a gasp at the sight of my face. I look downright feverish, my cheeks hot and ruddy and my eyes at once dark and too bright, and I resolve to wash up with bracing cold water before going downstairs. The last thing I want is for Peeta to think I’ve taken sick the day after New Year’s.

I unplait my sleep-braid and brush out my hair with brisk, uneven strokes that betray the unsteadiness of my hands. I received two red ribbons for New Year’s and tradition dictates that I wear both of them today, woven into my hair. I don’t know if there’s a special style indicated when both ribbons are from the same boy, but since I don’t know for certain that Peeta and my companion _are_ one and the same, I opt for two braids: one over each shoulder, loosely plaited, with a red ribbon at its heart, twining in and out and all around.

I look like a little girl when I’m finished: a silly Merchant girl who got into her mother’s ribbon-box and threaded the finest two into clumsy, childish pigtails, and yet somehow I can’t stop smiling. _Two ribbons; two braids,_ I think. _Two sweethearts._

I’ve never had a sweetheart before, and suddenly having two at once – or a single, very devoted one – is like going from bone broth to a lavish feast. Like coming here from the Seam: transitioning instantly from poverty and cold and hunger to luxury and comfort and food so rich and plentiful that wild birds grow fat on its crumbs.

Once again, Peeta answers my lack with excess, filling my hollows with so much golden bounty that I’m like to burst at the seams from it. _And how much more would he give me,_ I wonder madly, _if I_ were _the girl he loved with all his heart?_ What more remains to be given, when already he showers me with affection and fine presents?

I leave the room without putting on shoes, anticipating that I’ll have on boots soon enough – _or maybe,_ suggests a voice, bubbling up in my chest like an elated giggle, _you’ll be on the sofa, with Peeta tugging off your stockings and covering your feet with those wonderful happy kisses._

I pause halfway down the stairs and sternly curb this line of thought. Ribbons aside, it’s next to impossible that Peeta could ever love me, and more to the point, I don’t love _him_ , not one bit. If the impossible _should_ happen, I need to explain that much right away, so I don’t confuse him or raise his hopes unfairly.

For starters, I need to clarify why he comes to my bed every night and tell him that I'd much rather he lie close to me, like he did yesterday afternoon, than huddle far away on the opposite side of the mattress where I can’t reach him, even with my arms stretched to their fullest extent. That I'd rather lay my cheek on his chest than any pillow of down or pine needles or deerskin and be wrapped in his arms rather than a thousand furs. _He should come earlier to join me,_ I think practically. Then we could ready each other for bed, rather than inconveniencing Lavinia, and he could undress by the fire instead of hiding in the cold darkness on the opposite side of the room. He could enjoy his share of the bedtime snacks while they’re still fresh and warm, then we could laughingly brush the crumbs from each other’s nightclothes and curl together beneath fox fur and deerskin, trading whispers and sighs with spiced tea on our breath.

 _I don’t love him,_ I remind myself firmly _, and it’ll only complicate things if he should decide to love me._ Peeta was born to be a husband and father, and I don’t want that; any of it. Exquisitely iced cookies, small curly heads and eager squeals. Tiny hands filled with crumbled-up sweets for the chipmunk, or bread for the birds, or apples for Rye. Black hair and blue eyes. Star-babes. Baby fawns. A womb swollen and radiant as a harvest moon.

 _He is not mine,_ I assert silently to Granny Ashpet as I reach the foot of the stairs. _Nor do I want him to be._

I walk into the kitchen.

Peeta is removing a deep square pan from the oven, and the smell of him, even at this distance, floods my belly with liquid heat. He showered this morning: the scents of honey and cream and cloves radiate from him, along with his natural musk and the sweet-batter fragrance of whatever’s in the pan, and his curls are fat and buoyant. I wonder how quickly one would spring back if I drew it straight then loosed it again.

I stand off to his right, but of course there’s no ribbon on that sleeve. There’s no hard and fast rule about this, but I know Peeta will wear his on the left. The heart side, like wedding rings.

He bends to remove a second, identical pan from the oven, and I ache to bound across the warm stone floor and hug him soundly about the middle. If I lean up on tiptoe, I can even press my face against the tender patch of soft skin at the back of his neck. I’ve brushed it briefly with my fingertips once or twice before, but how much sweeter would it feel beneath my cheek?

He sets the pan on the worktop alongside its twin. _Twins,_ I think. _This boy could give me twins._ Two Mellark babies, chubby and golden-haired, to cradle in my arms as they doze and cry and suckle – or maybe a dark girl, as fierce and beautiful as Granny Ashpet, and a fair boy, wide-eyed and gentle, with a headful of honey-curls like his father. _Twin fawns,_ I think. _One golden as the sun, the other silvery as the moon, and this strong handsome boy as my mate._

Peeta turns a little to reach for a knife, and I feel its blade in my heart. Not the sharp edge, kept razor-keen by this grandson of butchers and bakers; no, that would be a mercy. This pain is from the blunt side, pressing deep and slow and relentless, cleaving my chest with brute force.

It's astonishing, how much it hurts to lose something you never wanted in the first place.

Peeta isn’t wearing my ribbon, not on either arm, and I want to double-over and either vomit or cry – or maybe both. And the worst of it is: I knew better than to expect anything else. I know he loves a Seam girl; the proof is still, _always_ , tied around his left wrist. I knew last night’s red ribbon was just a little New Year’s gift and I _knew_ , better than my own name, that it couldn’t be Peeta coming to my bed night after night.

I didn’t – _don’t_ – even want him, this stocky Merchant baker-boy with his paintings and his pony and his jars of homemade applesauce, but for one foolish moment I let myself imagine that _he_ could want _me_ , and the resulting heartbreak is second only to what I felt when my father died. I bring a fist to my stomach and press hard, fighting the urge to sob or heave, then Peeta turns to take a plate from the table and sees me for the first time.

His face lights up like his dining room at one of our festive dinners, all flickers of honey-flames and merry shadows, and the plate slips back to the tabletop with a quiet clatter. “ _Katniss,_ ” he says, and my name on his lips is like a song.

He looks closer then, or maybe realizes what he’s looking at, and his smile vanishes as he hurries over to me. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his eyes narrowing in worry. “Are you sick?”

He brings a hand to my middle and eases my fist away, then presses my stomach gently with his fingers, here and there, as though seeking for tenderness or a wound. It doesn’t hurt, but still I pull back with a quiet cry. His hands feel too good and only serve to remind me of the treasure lying in store for that oblivious Seam girl: a boy so sweet that he can break your heart in one moment and tend its wound in the next.

“I just…had a funny little pang in my stomach,” I tell him dismissively, a half-lie. The pang was higher up, and it was neither funny nor little.

Peeta frowns. “Maybe you’re just hungry?” he suggests, but his eyes are unconvinced. “I’m always astonished at how hungry I can be the morning after New Year’s.”

“Yeah,” I say dully, and drop my gaze to the floor. I _am_ hungry, or was until a moment ago, which is ridiculous in light of the day-long feast we enjoyed yesterday.

I’m still hungry, truth be told, but not for food. I’ve never been so hungry, not even on the hollowest night; never been so desperate to be filled, nor so certain that I never will be, and it’s all Peeta’s fault. This boy has stretched me with his bounty and carved me out like a honeycomb, lining me with hollows that can only be filled by his golden sweetness. The honey of his touch and his voice and his gaze.

Peeta Mellark is a feast that I have been invited to enjoy, however fleetingly, and the fare is _wondrous_. The honey-bread of his arms, the spiced wine of his breath. I’ve grown accustomed to this meal. I thrive upon it; _require_ it, even, for my survival.

But all too soon – so soon it burns like a needle plunged deep into my heart – another will be here to partake of him, and I will be relegated from this place of honor and made to subsist on crumbs. On brief glances and kind words in passing; perhaps a hug at holiday-time.

 _I can live on crumbs,_ I think. I’ve lived on far less, but not since the night I took Peeta’s bargain – since he became a part of my daily life. My life before him was like a meal of blackbirds in gravy – no, _worse_ , like mint broth bolstered with pebbles – and I can’t go back to that. Not after a month of feasting upon his company. 

“Hey,” Peeta says softly, and his big hands are on my cheeks, tilting my head just enough so he can see my eyes. His own are now as full of grief as they were with joy just moments ago. “You’re _sad_ ,” he says, and it only makes the ache worse. “Please tell me what’s wrong, Katniss,” he entreats. “Please, let me help.”

 _You can’t,_ I think bitterly, and lower my gaze once more, but it catches partway down on the thick loops of heathered gray-brown fur that lie against his throat. Peeta’s wearing his muffler, the one I sewed for him and wrapped about his neck last night, and unless, for some silly reason, he put it on expressly for my arrival, he’s had it on all morning.

I raise my eyes to his, frowning in confusion. “You wore this while cooking breakfast,” I say, touching the fur with my fingertips.

He gives me a bittersweet, crooked smile. “I only took it off to shower,” he replies.

 _Foolish boy,_ I think. _Ridiculous boy._

I take a swift step forward and bury my face in the warm fur at his throat.

It doesn’t occur to me for a moment that Peeta might not want me so close, and the careful pressure of his hand at the back of my head, cupping me closer still, is like a homecoming.

 _Oh, this is enough,_ I think with a stifled little moan as he traces the parting in my hair, from crown to nape, with one gentle fingertip. I could live forever on a few such “crumbs.”

 _I’ll gorge myself on him,_ I think dizzily, _like a bear before winter. Will fill my honey-stores to the brim with these lush, stolen moments, and when the time comes I’ll hardly notice that they’re gone._

My fingers are trapped between us, curled in the wool of his sweater, and his free arm is at my waist, warm and solid and strong. This is _more_ than enough, I realize. To be _loved_ by this boy, well and truly – to be kissed and caressed, to lie naked in his arms and be made love to, to grow round-bellied with his babes – would be more than my fragile body could bear. I would burst from it.

_Surely the moon would burst to contain the sun…_

But _oh,_ such a death would be glorious. To be flooded with golden radiance and filled to my seams with honey…perhaps _that_ is the source of the blinding white flames that encircle the moon in an eclipse. Not the light of the sun surrounding her as they embrace but his light emanating from _inside_ her, blazing at the seams of her silver body as, for one exquisite moment, he empties his very self into her.

I duck away quickly, my cheeks on fire at the direction of my thoughts, to find Peeta blushing as well. “I’m sorry,” he says, a little sheepishly. “I, um…I thought you wanted a hug.”

The apology in his voice hurts like a blow, and I do what I ached to do earlier, only from the front: I launch myself back at him with a ragged little laugh and snug my arms around his middle, making him grunt in surprise. “I did,” I confess against his shoulder. “I _do_.”

“Well, in that case,” he says, and the words are full of good humor but come out shaky, even hoarse. His arms close around me like a sigh, so warm and snug and _good_ , and I burrow my face deep into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, drinking in greedy lungfuls of rabbit-musk and boy-musk and freshly laundered wool, of honey and cream and cloves and rich griddle cake batter.

 _And why not?_ I think. At any moment Peeta might go to town and declare himself to his sweetheart. Might bring home his longed-for Seam bride to share his laughter and meals and tender touches, his kitchen and his bearskin and his bed. I only wish there was a better way to store up these moments, like a jar for catching moonbeams, from which I might consume one glimmering golden mote as needed. I know how to ration, maybe better than anyone, but I suspect I’ll burn through these memories the moment Peeta’s wife sets foot in this house.

“So,” Peeta murmurs, tipping his head a little to rub his cheek against my hair, and I hear a smile in his voice. “I see you have two sweethearts.”

I draw back with a scowl to find him grinning broadly, his blue eyes bright but soft. “I don’t have any sweethearts at all,” I tell him plainly. “Whatever gave you the idea that I have _two_?”

He brings his hands to my shoulders and cups a beribboned braid in each one. “Two ribbons,” he says simply, tracing the bright satin with his thumbs and smiling like he’s been handed the moon on a platter. “Two sweethearts.”

I roll my eyes. It had seemed so _right_ upstairs, to weave the ribbons into my braids like this, but I feel utterly ridiculous now, like the little girl I saw briefly in the mirror, playing at being grown-up with her mother’s ribbons. “ _No_ sweethearts,” I say firmly, freeing my braids from his fingers. “The ribbons were just New Year’s gifts, and you’re supposed to wear them the next day. I mean, this one –” I flick the tail of my left braid demonstratively – “came from _you_ , obviously…”

“And the other?” Peeta asks when I trail off. His eyes have lost some of their brightness; he looks curious and perhaps a little sad.

I contemplate my answer for a long moment. I can hardly tell him that the ribbon came from the stranger who sleeps in my bed, let alone that it might have been in response to a pillow of rabbit skins and the red ribbon I foolishly tied around it. “From the same place as the wintergreen sprig,” I say cautiously. “The one I wore in my hair last night.”

“Ah,” he says, seeming at once satisfied and utterly unsurprised by this answer. “From the woods.”

I’m not sure how I expected him to react to my evasive reply, but this certainly wasn’t it, and my brows fly up accordingly. However fanciful the tales he learned at Grandma Lydda’s knee, Peeta _must_ know that the woods isn’t a person, capable of thoughts and feelings and giving gifts.

“I've always known that the woods loves you,” he continues softly, stroking my right braid – the one with my companion’s ribbon plaited at its heart – with a fingertip. “The woods and everything in it.”

I tilt my head, considering. Hadn’t I thought something quite similar upon finding the wintergreen sprig on my pillow? That the woods had finally claimed me as its own by bestowing such an elusive gift? Impossible as it may be outside the realm of old tales, perhaps my companion truly _is_ some sort of embodiment of the woods. Perhaps they are, and always have been, the white bear of my dreams.

Or perhaps my companion is an all-too-human being who brought me an orange as a New Year’s treat and wrapped it with the red ribbon I had tied around their pillow. For all I know, the ribbon in my right plait is the same one Peeta tied around my father’s spile. My own ribbon returned to me, and not a sweetheart’s token at all.

“Hey,” Peeta says, and his warm hands are cupping my cheeks once more. “You look _heartbroken_ , Katniss,” he whispers, and there is so much sorrow in his eyes that it doubles the ache in my chest. “Did I say something to upset you? _Please_ tell me what’s wrong.”

 _You don’t love me,_ I think pitifully. _No one does._ I came downstairs just moments ago, almost ready to believe that I had a sweetheart – in spite of every bit of common sense screaming the contrary – only to discover that neither Peeta Mellark nor my mysterious bed partner truly wants me for their own. These precious red ribbons – the first I’ve ever received – are all but meaningless. I may as well have threaded twigs through my braids.

“ _Please,_ ” Peeta says again, barely a whisper. His hands have inched back to cradle my head, and his thumbs are circling my earlobes in warm, soothing strokes. It feels so good I want to cry.

“I can’t bear to see you so sad,” he says. “You were so happy yesterday – I-I thought – and you look so beautiful this morning. Is it your family?” he wonders. “Do you wish you’d spent the holiday in town with them instead?”

His words are hesitant, even a little worried, but the answer is painfully obvious, surely even to him. I shake my head against his hands.

He leans in closer, his voice dropping to an oddly tremulous whisper. “Do you…do you wish you hadn’t kissed me?” he asks.

I stare up at him, suppressing a bitter laugh. I probably _should_ regret the kiss, particularly at this moment, but I don’t. As inconsequential as a kiss may be, that one was my first – probably my only, _ever_ – and Peeta saw it as some sort of rare gift. I owe him more than I can ever begin to repay, but at least I’ve come up with one thing of value to offer, and he certainly didn’t refuse it.

And if I’m honest, kissing Peeta might have been the most pleasant experience of my life. The warmth and softness of his mouth against mine; the sweet spiced orange of his breath; the brush of his thumb across my lips afterward. He’s given me so many comforts and pleasures since I came to live here, but that one will hold pride of place among the golden motes in my memory jar for years to come. I don’t love Peeta and certainly don’t want him for my own, but I anticipate many winter nights ahead – after his wife has come to join us – where I’ll curl beneath the covers and touch my mouth with shy fingertips, remembering how it felt to stand before his hearth with a red ribbon at my brow and a pearl at my throat; to curl my fingers in fur and press his lips with mine.

“N-No,” I reply, my voice catching strangely, and Peeta’s eyes go wide, as though I’ve just told him something astonishing, even impossible. “I-I mean: it was New Year’s,” I explain quickly. “Just…just tradition. You gave me a ribbon, so I gave you a kiss. That’s how it works, right?”

His mouth twists up in an expression too sad to be called a smile. “That’s the way I understand it,” he replies. “ _Red for sweethearts, white for friends, and always exchanged with a kiss._ ”

Something in his words – in his quote of the old tradition – makes my breath catch. _Sweetheart,_ I think. _Red ribbons are for sweethearts, and kisses too._ Except I’m not Peeta’s sweetheart, and he’s certainly not mine. Last night’s exchange was a child’s imitation of a lover’s rite, nothing more. Every household in Twelve hangs a kissing bough, regardless of wealth or size or romantic attachments, and it would be unthinkable to burn the wood and put away the ribbons again without _some_ sort of exchange, however temporary.

“W-What about you?” I ask, talking over the croak in my voice in a fierce attempt to foist the conversation onto him. “I know kisses weren’t really a possibility, but: did you get anything from your sweetheart for New Year’s?”

Peeta’s mouth drops open like a fish’s and my face catches fire with mortification. I’m no better than a nosy Seam laundress, seeking wayward long hairs or whiffs of perfume on a Merchant husband’s shirt, the better to discuss with her friends over bowls of Greasy Sae’s stew. “I’m sorry,” I say in a rush, “I-I know that’s none of my business. I just…I would’ve thought she’d at least send you a ribbon for your sleeve –”

_Especially since you’re not wearing mine…_

“– especially after the venison we sent,” I conclude firmly. Seam girl or no, it’s the very least Peeta’s sweetheart could have done – because, now I think of it, he must have sent her an entire sleighful of lavish presents in addition to the parcel of choice meat I prepared. If he gave _me_ a pearl on a silver chain – and sweets and skis and an orange and a painting besides – he will have _showered_ her with pretty gifts.

And even if – impossible as it seems – his interest is unwelcome, she could have found _something_ to give him in return for the presents he sent, no matter how poor she is. My family was once as poor as they come, but even _I_ could have come up with a New Year’s gift for a hopeful, generous suitor, whether I wanted him or not. _A piece of her father’s clothing would have sufficed,_ I think with a scowl for this mystery girl. Even the poorest family in the Seam could spare a pair of stockings or a handkerchief – maybe even a scarf – for a generous sweetheart like Peeta.

“Oh, Katniss,” he says with a little laugh, and his lips have softened into a recognizable smile: a foolish, almost indulgent one. “I have it on good authority that she liked the venison, and that means more to me than any ribbon or gift.”

“But…but…that’s little better than a _thank-you!_ ” I sputter, indignant on his behalf. “You must have given her _loads_ of beautiful things – ribbons and jewelry and paintings – and all she can manage is a word of appreciation for the _food?_ What kind of greedy, ungrateful –”

Peeta stops my words with two fingers, pressed gently but firmly over my lips, and dips his head to kiss the tip of my nose. I can’t imagine why, but he’s grinning so hard it must hurt his face. “Speaking of food,” he teases, “there’s a miniature feast on the counter just waiting for you. I know the day after New Year’s is always a bit of a let-down, so I tried to be creative with our leftovers.”

I give him the crossest blink I can manage, still silenced as I am by his strong fingers, and he laughs, the warmest, most joyful laugh I think I’ve ever heard in my life. “Come here,” he says, and scoops me up by the hips to seat me on the worktop, so close to one of the baking pans – but not too close – that its heat bathes my right thigh.

“This is a griddle cake bake,” he announces, still grinning, and I peer down as he cuts a square of the pan’s golden contents and lifts it out onto a plate. “I cut the leftover griddle cakes into cubes and covered them with a batter of cream-coffee, plus eggs and flour and nutmeg,” he explains. “So it’s sort of one _enormous_ griddle cake with bits of all the New Year’s griddle cakes baked inside.”

He cuts a generous forkful and raises it to my mouth, and I note flecks of bright peppermint and melted chocolate, even a bit of gingerbread griddle cake, just in that one flaky golden bite. Naturally, I devour it – and give a little whimper of pleasure as the myriad flavors melt onto my tongue, enrobed all about in a rich batter of coffee and nutmeg and cream. I didn’t think _anything_ could surpass our magnificent New Year’s breakfast feast, but a dish that contains all of its flavors at once comes exquisitely close. “ _Oh,_ that’s good,” I sigh and try to take the plate from his hands, but he draws it back to him with a chuckle.

“Not yet, greedy gosling,” he teases, moving down to the second pan. “I made you an egg bake too: eggs – and eggs and eggs! – and cheese and all our leftover breakfast meats from yesterday.” He cuts a square from that pan as well and I can barely keep myself from lunging for the plate. If the griddle cake bake is delicious with its mix of sweet flavors, the egg bake will be almost beyond imagining. Sausages and ham and cheese – and bacon! – all in one hearty egg dish. “Oh yes _please_ ,” I beg, curling my fingers toward the plate, and Peeta presses the edge into my hand with a smile.

“I’ve got one other thing coming from the breakfast leftovers, but that’s for lunch,” he tells me with a wink.

I cut a greedy forkful from one edge of the square of egg bake and my mouth waters in anticipation in the matter of seconds that it takes to reach my mouth. Peeta used at least two different kinds of cheese in this, one creamy and the other sharp, and this particular bite contains slivers of sweet herbed sausage and savory crumbles of bacon amid fluffy heaps of perfectly seasoned egg. My second bite, taken even more eagerly, features the smoky sweetness of ham and the third, all three meats at once.

“Not too bad, as holiday leftovers go?” Peeta asks as he ladles me out a mug of cider, though his broad smile makes it clear he knows my opinion on this breakfast.

I give a vigorous nod in reply. “We rarely had leftover food at home,” I answer through a mouthful of egg and bacon, “let alone at holiday-time, so this is doubly exciting.”

He comes back to me and sets the mug beside my right hip, his smile gentler now. “There’s plenty of venison too,” he assures me, “and all kinds of bread. That’ll be lunch, probably today and tomorrow.”

He winces a little at that – Merchant families, I’ve learned, prefer variety in their menus and don’t simply eat away at something until it’s gone – but I shake my head. “That sounds wonderful,” I tell him.

Peeta turns toward the table to get a plate for himself, but I catch at his sleeve and tug him back to me. “Just grab another fork and share with me,” I say. “We eat each other’s food often enough; why dirty a second plate?”

He concedes to this with a chuckle and together we put away three heaping platefuls. When Peeta finds a “pocket” of gingerbread in his side of a griddle cake square, he happily rotates the plate so I can eat the rest, and I do the same a few minutes later upon finding a wedge of cider griddle cake on my side. He nudges “nests” of bacon crumbles at me with his fork and I feed him bites of egg bake heavy with sausage and cheese, to his delight, and in-between we trade lingering sips of cider from the bowl-sized mug.

The whole while I sit on the worktop – all the better for taking extra helpings, I decide – with the plate on my lap and Peeta standing just in front of me, now and again brushing my kneecaps as he leans toward the pans to scoop out another square of egg- or griddle cake bake for us to share. We haven’t enjoyed a meal in this fashion since the day he taught me to ski, and I like it very much. I tell him so, blushing fiercely, and he grins in reply, though not without two patches of ruddiness staining his own cheeks.

“I’ll feed you on the worktop every day, if you like,” he tells me as I finally surrender the plate, my belly full as a nursing kitten’s, but before he can move toward the sink I curl my legs around his hips and pull him back to me. _Mine_ , I think foolishly as I bury my face in crisp green wool, as warm and heady as meadow-grass in summer, and laugh as rabbit fur tickles the bridge of my nose. _My crumbs,_ I concede, even as I tangle my fingers in the front of his sweater. My hoarded-up portion of a fleeting feast, perhaps, but in this moment, _mine_ nonetheless 

“ _Every_ day,” Peeta says again, hoarsely this time, his cheek resting on the crown of my head.

Between the two of us, we’ve made a substantial dent in both baked dishes, and to my surprise Peeta divides the rest – minus a generous inch or two of the griddle cake bake, which I know he’s designated for the birds – into two portions and parcels it up in crocks for Pollux and Lavinia. “I have a feeling they’ll both be glad of a cooked breakfast this morning,” he says, in the same cryptic tone as last night, when he referred to their interactions as a dance. “Are you planning to work in the stable today?”

“Of course,” I reply, having assumed this much was obvious. “The deerskin’s been sitting for almost two full days. I need to get back to it.”

 _Truer words were never spoken,_ I think wryly. I need a cold draft at my back, a blade in my hands, and oily brain-tan under my nails, not this warm, sweet-smelling boy in my arms. I’ve missed my huntress-work these past two days – though, if I’m honest, not as much as I would’ve expected.

“Fair enough,” Peeta says, and lifts me down off the counter. “Would you mind taking Pollux’s breakfast with you?” he asks, presenting me with one of the crocks.

I shake my head and take the crock from his hands. “I’ll take the birds’ too, if you want,” I offer with a little smile, nodding toward the remaining inches of griddle cake bake, and he laughs.

“Get yourself bundled and I’ll make up the tray,” he replies, “and maybe even throw in a treat for Rye. The way everyone else is feasting this morning, he’ll be broken-hearted if I don’t send him something special.”

I’m in my hunting boots and Dad’s jacket when I recall the pretty cardinal-cap Lavinia gave me yesterday and run upstairs to retrieve it from my drawer. If I was actually hunting or doing butchering work I’d wear my plain old stocking cap from home, but for simply going to and from the stable and maybe wearing around the workshop if it’s especially cold, there’s little danger of the new cap encountering stains or other damages.

Peeta’s waiting for me at the foot of the stairs with the bird tray and a smile as broad and golden as a sunrise. “ _There_ you are, little songbird,” he says, and there’s more affection than teasing in his words. “Fly back to me soon, okay?”

 _Crumbs,_ I remind myself firmly. _The birds of the woods eat the crumbs from his table and grow fat and cheerful upon them. Are you – a willow catkin, spun from starlight and sparrow-song; from winter and wildflowers and will-o’-the-wisps – so very different from those birds? How much more do you need to survive?_

“Okay,” I lie.

Truth be told, I plan to stay in the stable till sundown. To stretch and scrape and tan till I’ve forgotten the whole morning, both good moments and bad, and remember who I am again. Plain, scrawny Katniss Everdeen, huntress and companion to Peeta Mellark. Not the moon, not a doe, and certainly not a snow-maiden, brought to life by a scrap of red cloth and a boy’s sweet mouth.

The bird tray Peeta assembled doesn’t help with this one bit. Amid the carefully crumbled pieces of griddle cake bake are crusts of cranberry-studded bread, the caramel-soaked edges of sticky buns, bits of nutmeg-flecked yellow cake – the wedding cake he baked for me last night – and generous curls of orange peel. _Stupid boy,_ I think, aiming a spiteful kick into the nearest snowdrift. _Greedy boy. Must you woo even the creatures of my woods with your lover’s tokens?_

 _Then again,_ I think as I kneel in the snow for many long moments and watch the delighted birds gather about me to partake of their own New Year’s feast, _you know that’s not why he does it, and you always have._ Peeta doesn’t act to win another’s love, save for his sweetheart’s, perhaps. He does things _out of_ love. He’s bursting, overflowing with it, and anything in his wake gets bathed in that love, like when the sun crests the horizon and floods the woods and meadows – and every nest and burrow and puddle therein – with warmth and light.

I take a bit of spiced wedding cake in gloved fingers and toss it to the mourning dove on the fringe of the cluster. _My_ mourning dove, I think, and more like me than I ever realized before: small and plain and hungry; as eager for food and affection as the others but reluctant to fight for or demand it. “Come here, sweetheart,” I croon to her. “Just because he loves all of these squawkers, it doesn’t mean he loves you less.”

She cocks her tiny head at me, almost skeptically, and I laugh. “Okay, forget about him,” I tell her, inching sideways on my knees and scattering a few cross blackbirds. “ _I_ love you plenty, and I’ll always make sure there’s food for you.”

I dust the remaining crumbs into my hand and even steal a little brown sugar from the apples Peeta cut up for Rye and sprinkle the lot a foot or so away from her. The blackbirds eye this small bounty greedily, but I swish a gloved hand at them, driving them back, and the mourning dove hops forward to claim a quick, brave beakful of crumbs.

“Go on,” I encourage her softly. “I’ll stay till you’re done.”

And I do. I don’t stint the rest of the birds, of course – Peeta sent a true feast this morning, with more than enough for all, and there are boughfuls of cranberries draping the apple tree and seeded bird cakes lining the branches at the edge of the woods besides – but I make sure the mourning dove gets plenty of food for herself. I almost stretch out a gloved finger to stroke the soft curve of her belly – her feathers are the same color as my skin, I realize, and she’s eating just inches away from my hand – but I think better of it and get to my feet, dusting the snow from my knees. I expect her to flutter away from the sudden movement with a chittering-whistle of her wings, but she doesn’t. She lingers in the snow where I left her, regarding me almost thoughtfully.

The skin between my shoulder blades tingles – the feeling of being watched unawares – and I glance over my shoulder to see Peeta sitting on the back steps with the chipmunk perched on his knee, stuffing its cheeks with tidbits from his palm, but his eyes aren’t on the little creature. He’s watching _me_ ; staring at me, really, with eyes that are wide and sad and almost… _hungry_. I’ve seen that look a hundred times in the cracked, mottled mirror of our old Seam house, and I turn away quickly, my cheeks hot. Peeta may have been watching me but I feel like _I’m_ the intruder, seeing his face at such an unguarded moment. I shouldn’t have pressed him about his sweetheart, let alone said such unkind things about her. He probably came to feed the chipmunk as a moment of reprieve, and here I was again.

I go quickly to the stable, angry at myself for having lingered in the garden with the birds, and to my surprise Pollux is nowhere in sight and Rye is leaning out over his stall door, hungry and hopeful at the sound of my arrival. “Where’s Pollux, boy?” I puzzle as he devours Peeta’s sugar-dusted apples straight from the tray. I peer into the stall on tiptoe to see that his hay bin is picked clean, and while it’s possible that he got an early breakfast and finished it already, it’s _unlikely_ , especially considering how voraciously he ate those apples.

And now I stop to think about it, the stable is colder than usual. The stove is still lit, I discover, but the fire is worrisomely low, and I stoke the ashes before loading it with fresh wood, one careful piece at a time, till the flames are bright and crackling with pine sap once more.

I bring Rye a pitchfork of hay and a scoop of grain, just in case, and run up to the loft with the breakfast crock. Pollux loves Rye and would never let him go hungry; he probably slept later than he meant to after all the festivities last night and simply hasn’t come downstairs yet.

But Pollux isn’t in his loft and, more to the point, his bed hasn’t been slept in. I suppose he might have spent the night in Lavinia’s attic or gone over this morning to use her shower, but that still doesn’t explain why he’s not in the stable _now_ ; why Rye hasn’t been fed and the stove had nearly gone out. I toss the crock onto the table and run back downstairs, intent on telling Peeta that something’s happened to Pollux, when I crash blindly into a broad chest at the foot of the stairs. A broad chest wearing a gray sweater and rumbling with quiet, throaty laughter.

“Where on earth have _you_ been?” I demand, hopping back onto the bottom step to glower at Pollux, who looks none the worse for wear, if perhaps a bit more rumpled and sleepy than usual, and he has the decency to blush. “Rye hasn’t had any breakfast and the stove was almost out,” I scold. “Peeta even sent you breakfast and – _why weren’t you here?_ ”

Pollux’s blush deepens and he spreads his hands in an apologetic gesture, but I’m not having any of it. “Rye’s hungry and I’m _cold,_ ” I say, jabbing him in the chest with two cross fingers. “I gave him a bit of feed and stoked the fire, but you know better than to leave things like this. Where have you _been_ all morning?”

His smile softens, and his eyes too, and he lifts his slate out from beneath his sweater to write a reply. I expect some silly, made-up excuse, maybe a joke at my expense, but Rye’s meals and the state of the stable stove are no laughing matter, and I read his message with narrowed eyes.

_With my wife._

For a half-second I'm shocked beyond speaking – Pollux, _married?_ – and then I realize this is exactly the sort of ridiculous response I was anticipating and give a humorless snort. “A likely story,” I reply. “Seeing as Rye and the sleigh have clearly been here all night, and you’re hardly outfitted for snowshoeing to town.”

He shakes his head. A smile tugs at one corner of his mouth, though his eyes are oddly grave, and he points back toward the house.

This makes even less sense than his wild declaration of having a wife, as that gesture has always indicated the house itself or even Peeta, and this time I shake my head. “If you’re going to make up stories, you need to do better than that,” I tell him sternly. “And if you’re going to neglect poor Rye, it should be for a better reason than sleeping late in Lavinia’s attic.”

He blinks rapidly at this, as though startled by my words, but gives no other response, neither a chuckle nor a cheeky message on his slate, and the uncharacteristic somberness in his eyes answers the riddle for me with swift, startling clarity. _Lavinia._ My chiding words were truer than I realized. Pollux was with _her_ this morning; in her attic, and probably in her bed.

Lavinia is his _wife._

My jaw slacks in disbelief. “ _Lavinia?_ ” I gasp, my mind full of the stunning girl who berated him without words the day she returned late from town and smacked him with his own slate yesterday afternoon. “You’re ma…b-b-but she…she barely even _likes_ you!” I sputter.

He laughs heartily at this, which only serves to make me angry, and I persist, “And how could you be married any–?”

He covers my mouth with one hand, his eyes flickering meaningfully toward the ceiling, and tips his head toward the stairs, indicating that I should go back up. I scowl, convinced that he’s trying to dismiss the issue by getting rid of me, and shake my head in reply, but he gives an exaggerated, emphatic nod and even nudges my shoulder with his free hand. For some reason he _really_ wants me to go upstairs. Maybe there’s something he wants to show me that will explain everything in some way.

“Okay,” I concede, tugging his hand down so I can speak. “But feed the pony first.”

He chuckles wryly and writes a quick message on his slate – _That’s the idea_ – and I go up to his loft once more, my head spinning.

Pollux and Lavinia _, married…_ For starters, I’m not even sure that’s _possible_. Avoxes are Capitol slaves, little better than livestock; lower even than the poorest district citizen. Surely they wouldn’t have been granted permission to marry in the Capitol or even at the Justice Building when they came to Twelve.

And that’s assuming they even _like_ each other in that way, which, judging by their interactions over the past month, is assuming a lot. Other than our New Year’s festivities, I’ve rarely seen Pollux and Lavinia in the same place at the same time, and they certainly don’t seek out each other’s company. And their kisses and gift exchanges yesterday were so hesitant. Surely if they were married – if they _loved_ each other – they would have been openly affectionate at holiday-time, and _especially_ as they exchanged sweetheart’s tokens.

 _The dance,_ I recall Peeta saying, so mysteriously, after Lavinia accepted the sewing box and Pollux touched her cheek. _Sometimes I wonder whose benefit it’s for._

And before that: _You’re not the only one he adores._

Whatever’s going on between Pollux and Lavinia, Peeta’s aware of it. He couldn’t _not_ be, not after spending nearly six months out here with them and five of those before I was here to keep him company.

And he’s never said a word about it to me.

Confusion and fury – even a bit of betrayal – war for precedence in my mind as my cheeks flame and I try to make sense of this impossible revelation. I remember how downcast Pollux was the day Lavinia went to town to work on my family’s new house and how upset he was when she finally came home, very late that evening. I’ve seen that sort of display – _what time of day do you call this?_ – between my parents, years ago, when Dad was kept late at the mines or made a quick stop at the Hob for a little present of some kind. Mom always knew somehow when he would be home, even on nights when he was late, and prepared his bath accordingly. But that didn’t stop her being anxious in his absence or aggravated when he arrived, gray with coal dust and grinning as he pressed a sound kiss to her scowling mouth or flushed cheek or the tip of her nose.

I think of Lavinia stroking the sweetheart ribbon at her throat, of her distraction and eagerness to leave me last night. Of the strange, edged thing that flickered between their gazes when Pollux picked up the red ribbon. Their interactions by the fire last night weren’t hesitant: they were _measured_. And I can’t begin to understand why.

I hear Pollux’s boots on the stairs and look up as he comes in. His merriment of moments ago is gone, replaced by more of that strange somberness, and he walks past me, deliberate and resolved, to take a notebook and pen from the dresser beside his bed. I’ve never seen him or Lavinia with a notebook, though it shouldn’t surprise me, considering the length of messages they must sometimes have to convey, and he flips through several pages, all covered with writing from top to bottom and some dog-eared at the edges, before reaching a blank one.

He quickly writes a line or two at the top of the page and comes over to set the notebook and pen on his table, in front of one of the empty chairs. The indication is clear and I seat myself in the chair to read his message.

_Safer this way. Ask me anything, but do it in writing._

I look up at him, curious and unsettled by these words. I’ve never seen this Pollux before, except maybe on that first morning in the woods, when I shook with remembered fears for Peeta and Pollux comforted me with his own fierce loyalty. This is the Pollux who was sentenced and mutilated by the Capitol, the man who remembers five years in fetid darkness and how easy it would be to put him back there.

His reluctance to let me speak recalls my first day here, when Peeta took me outside to tell me about Avoxes, and like any district citizen, I understand this particular caution all too well. _House is bugged?_ I write beneath his message and raise my brows in question as I push the notebook across the table to him.

He reads the message at a glance, nods, and seats himself in the second chair to write a response. _Assume everything is, even up here._

This is hardly surprising. The Capitol would hide transmitters in a crumbling outhouse if they thought more than one person could fit inside – and use it for conspiring against them, of course. I nod in comprehension but hesitate before asking my first question. You can’t be evasive or hesitant on paper, and whatever I say will read as bold as a demand.

Finally I just write _Married to Lavinia?_ and he nods. Even after the past several minutes of mulling this over and over, my heart still lurches a little. It’s too big; too _impossible_. I press a fist to my mouth for a few seconds, shaking my head in disbelief, and Pollux brushes my hand with his fingers. His expression is gentler now; reassuring, even a little apologetic.

 _I’m sorry you’re upset,_ he writes. _We never meant to deceive you. Lavinia’s scared after what happened to her, and she thought it would be safer if you didn’t know. We assumed you’d figure it out eventually, and if not we would have told you._

 _Peeta knows?_ I write, though I know the answer before I ask.

Pollux nods again. _We’ve only been married for a little while, and we needed his help,_ he writes. _And of course, he knew before that. I’ve loved Lavinia from the moment I first saw her (imagine walking into daylight after a five-year imprisonment in the sewers to see her), but I couldn’t tell her for ages, and when I finally did, it made things worse. She didn’t want anyone, let alone me._

He chuckles softly. _Peeta and I “talked” about our girls when he was at the Training Center, and after,_ he adds. _So strong and beautiful – and so oblivious._

My heart aches at all of this – especially Pollux’s release from the sewers and the vision that stunning Lavinia must have presented – but my mind hones in on the mention of Peeta’s girl. I’ve always assumed Pollux knows who she is, but this is my best chance to find out. _Ask me anything,_ he said…

 _You know who she is?_ I write. _Peeta’s girl?_ and Pollux gives a hearty belly laugh, as though I’ve just told him the best joke in the world.

 _Obviously,_ he writes. _But you don’t really want to know._

I meet his grin with a scowl. He’s entirely right, of course. Once I know her name she’ll become _real_ , utterly and undeniably, but until then I can pretend she’s nothing more than a pretty figment from a dream or an old tale.

 _Like the moon?_ wonders a wry voice – Granny Ashpet’s – in my mind. _Like a silver doe, or a snow maiden?_

I vigorously cross out the last two lines of our exchange, up to Pollux’s remark about their respective girls. _Were you married in town?_ I ask, deliberately drawing the conversation back to the subject at hand. Pollux said they needed Peeta’s help, so I imagine he applied for some sort of special permission at the Justice Building – and paid heavily to secure it – like when he wanted to take me out of the district.

Pollux shakes his head, his bearded mouth twisting bitterly and his eyes dark with anger. _Peeta tried,_ he writes, _but they wouldn’t consent, and not because of money. Because we aren’t people, _he writes, and he underlines the word so furiously that the pen tears a hole in the page. _We’re objects, they told him, like fenceposts or feed pails. There would be no purpose in letting an Avox marry, they said. Another Avox or anyone at all._

I’d expected something like this, but to see the truth spelled out on paper in Pollux’s bold, angry script is nothing short of heartbreaking. “I’m so sorry,” I tell him, and the sound of my voice is jarring after our hushed exchange of pen-strokes. “So…what did you do?”

His features soften and he gestures at the notebook with a small smile, reminding me that silence is essential. _We did what you do here,_ he writes. _We toasted bread over the stable stove and wrote promises to each other. Peeta wanted to buy us proper rings but we knew how it would look, especially when he’d just been refused permission for us to marry. So I made back panels for our slates and we keep the toasting promises inside. Always with us and close to our hearts._

He turns over his slate to show me, sliding up the thin wood panel to reveal a folded sheet of paper with neat lines of feminine handwriting. Handwriting that I recognize as Lavinia’s, even as rarely as I’ve seen it.

A toasting. Pollux and Lavinia had a _toasting._ I doubt anyone outside of Twelve has _ever_ been wed in such a fashion, though plenty of people across Panem know about our tradition now, owing to Peeta’s Games; to his clever costumes and the little rite he performed after Larkspur’s death. Peeta would have had to explain it to Pollux and Lavinia; maybe he even suggested it after the officials at the Justice Building refused to allow them to marry.

A secret toasting in a fairytale house in the woods. Peeta will have baked their special toasting loaf and prepared a wedding feast besides, and as the lone guest in attendance, save for little Rye, he might even have sung the old bridal songs to them as they knelt by the stable stove and exchanged bread and promises.

It’s the saddest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard: a tender, bittersweet fairytale, of the sort that would have made my father tear up a little as he told it. Two mute slaves – a breathtaking woman with fiery hair and golden eyes and this burly, red-bearded man – marrying in spite of the law in a secret ceremony prepared by a gentle, lonely sun-boy with an oblivious sweetheart and a missing leg.

I wonder if it broke his heart to bake their toasting bread. To sing their bridal songs and feast them with rich things, then send them off to their marriage bed and take himself back to his empty house and his silent sunset room, to lie alone beneath the pale furs and long for the sweetheart who barely knows he exists.

“I wish I’d been there,” I whisper to the table-top. “I would have sung the bridal songs with him and shared his portion of the wedding supper, and afterward I would have sat with him by the fire and wrapped him in warm wool and fairy tales, so he wouldn’t feel so alone.”

I realize of a sudden that I spoke these words aloud – words that could be dangerous, even fatal, to Pollux and Lavinia, who’ve been so careful about concealing their marriage that they even hid it from _me_ – and look up in horror, a hand clapped to my mouth, to find Pollux staring at me, but his expression is neither angry nor frightened. He’s looking at me as though he’s just seen me for the first time, or as though he turned away for a moment and when he looked back, I’d transformed from a girl he knew well into some unrecognizable creature.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, quieter still. “I didn’t mean –”

But he silences me with a slow shake of the head and narrowed, considering eyes. _That one was okay, I think,_ he writes.

My whole body sags a little with relief. “Okay,” I say, and pick up the pen. _I think I understand,_ I write. _You don’t want it to get back to the Capitol that you’re married._

Their marriage would be seen as a defiant act, particularly in light of Peeta’s failed attempt to get permission for it, so of course they would be vigilant about concealing it from everyone, _especially_ me. They know I have regular contact with Mom and Prim, and half the district must frequent the apothecary shop. My family doesn’t gossip, but if Prim told even _one_ school friend that the beautiful red-haired woman who sometimes comes to town for supplies is married to the bearded blond man who comes the rest of the time, it could reach a Peacekeeper in a matter of hours.

Pollux gives me an encouraging nod and my cheeks grow warm as I go on: _But you live separately – or at least, give the appearance that you do._ I glance up to find him watching me with a certain degree of amusement and bite my lip before adding, in a burst of raw nerve: _Why?_

I suspect he knows what I mean without me having to say it outright, or at least, I really _hope_ he does. After all, Peacekeepers might well arrest Avoxes for getting married after they were denied permission to do so, but sex is part and parcel of the Capitol’s glutted, greedy, pleasure-devouring culture. Whoever monitors the bugs in Peeta’s house probably _expects_ two good-looking Avoxes living alone on the fringe of a wilderness to become lovers. _They’ll mate out of necessity_ , Capitol folk would cackle to one another over glowing goblets of drug-spiked cordials. _Like beasts of any species thrown together long enough._

It’s a cruel, repulsive way to describe _anyone’s_ union, let alone the tender one between this gentle man and the woman he clearly adores, but it’s how the Capitol thinks, and surely Pollux and Lavinia could turn it to their advantage so they could at least share a bed without fear.

 _Lavinia wanted that from the beginning,_ he writes. _To keep our separate rooms, to hide our moments together – even from Peeta at first. She didn’t want the Capitol to have any idea that we were in a relationship. I think you know what happened to her and her boyfriend, and she was afraid of it all happening again._

I know as much as Peeta told me my first day at his house, and as terrible as that was, I can’t help thinking that there are more horrifying details to the story. Capitol atrocities that I can barely guess at.

I give a little nod of understanding, pressing my lips together at the thought, and he goes on: _The first time we_

He drops the pen, his cheeks coloring a little, and spreads his hands in a helpless sort of gesture that makes me blush hot as a stove. I lower my eyes to the page and give a vigorous nod, hoping it’s sufficient to convince him that I know what he’s talking about without seeing it in writing, to which he gives a throaty chuckle, crosses out the “we,” and completes the sentence.

_The first time, she was terrified afterward that a hovercraft full of Peacekeepers was going to descend and kill us or take us away and torture us and enslave us again. Peacekeepers tracked her to Twelve before so it made sense that they might do it again, and all because she wanted a new life in a quiet place with a boy that she loves._

I glance up at this to find Pollux smiling a little, softly. _Yes, believe it or not, she worries about me too,_ he writes. _And she’s admitted to loving me at least once that I remember._ He winks at that, and I know I’m finally getting the teasing I’d expected all along.

 _What Peeta said about me sometimes staying the night in her attic was as much for the Capitol’s benefit as your own,_ he explains. _What he told you about me using the shower or her sofa on cold nights was literally true for the first several months we were here, and after, it made for a good cover when we were spending the night together. He knew there was a chance you might see me going to the attic or –_ he bites his lower lip, his cheeks brightening above his beard – _might hear me in Lavinia’s room, and anyone bothering to listen to us in the Capitol would assume that we were just taking advantage of the proximity and solitude._ His lips twist in distaste. _Like they would,_ he adds.

 _Will it be easier?_ I write. _Now that I know? I won’t tell anyone, of course._

He shrugs, but it’s encouraging to not get a cynical or dubious look in reply. I imagine he understands that a girl who kept her family alive through illegal hunting and foraging knows the value of secrecy better than anyone. _Lavinia’s never been the kind of girl to show affection when someone might see,_ he writes, _but now that the secret’s out, she might let me steal a kiss when you’re around. And maybe,_ he continues, his eyes crinkling at the corners as his smile widens, _she’ll start leaving you a little earlier at night. She would never shirk her duties, of course, and she loves you too much to leave you without every last little comfort, but I don’t think she’d protest if you sent her off a few minutes early to, say, spend time with her husband._

I raise my brows at this, trying to look amused and scandalized all at once, but I expect the effect is ruined by the fierce color rising in my cheeks. I would never begrudge these two a single intimate moment, let alone stand in their way, but it’s one thing to be aware that they’re lovers and quite another to dismiss Lavinia early, knowing exactly what she’s on her way to do.

Well…as exactly as I can know _anything_ about sex.

“Um,” I croak, and Pollux laughs gently.

 _It’s not like that,_ he explains, only to concede a moment later, a little shame-faced: _Not all of the time, at least. Being married is just as much about being close. Combing her hair, helping her undress, sharing a meal, or simply holding her. And we usually spend a good half-hour just writing things to each other about our day. Silly things Rye does, or impossibly good things Peeta does, or the amazing things you do._

I scowl upon reading these words, anticipating another joke at my expense, but Pollux shakes his head and writes quickly: _You brought down a deer with one perfect shot and in the span of a couple of hours, carved it up into a holiday feast to feed everyone you love. Rabbits are small and quick, but every time you go into the woods you bring back two or three of them like it’s nothing and skin them like you were born to it and make beautiful things out of their furs. Peeta was right. You are magnificent._

My lips quiver; a tremor warning of tears. “I’m really _not_ ,” I whisper as firmly as I can, tracing the words with a fingertip, and Pollux leans across the table to kiss my forehead. It’s a surprisingly sweet gesture coming from this playful man, and afterward he tips his head to rest his cheek against my temple for a long moment.

I’ve forgotten how comforting it feels to have whiskers against my skin, to be embraced by a man who smells of pine fires and snow, and I give a noiseless little sob in response, enough to make Pollux draw back a little to seek my eyes. He looks nothing like my father, of course, with his bright beard and fair skin and thick sandy hair, but the quiet similarities are undeniable. This close to him, I can even smell a whisper of the ferny floral scent Lavinia always wears; an further confirmation of his story, perhaps, but this too reminds me of my father. Of the heady licorice notes of sweet cicely that met my burrowing nose when I hugged him around the neck every morning – and the scents of cinnamon and bay leaves that swirled about my mother’s fingers when she drew up the covers to my chin, every night but Sunday.

I try to imagine how you can be so intimate with someone that their scent emanates from your skin and my mind fills with a quiet sunrise. With honey, cream, and cloves and a broad, bare chest, warm and musky and pink with dawn-light beneath my cheek.

I wonder, bitterly, how many nights it will take for Peeta’s bride to carry his scent at her throat. How long and tenderly he will have to make love to her till her skin is sweet with bread and honey and boy-musk.

I dredge up a thin smile for Pollux, who has been watching me all this while, his lips uncertain whether to twitch upward into a smile or tighten in a frown, and I touch his bearded cheek with a fingertip. “You’re not so bad yourself,” I tease weakly, and he grins.

He carefully tears the page of our conversation from his notebook and sets it aside. _Stove,_ he writes across the top in explanation, and I nod – the safest place for these words is the fire, and I can see to it myself when I go downstairs – but I can’t help puzzling aloud over the notebook’s remaining contents. Considering the dangerous things he and I discussed in the span of one short page, the previous exchanges must surely be enough to see him executed, if ever they fell into Peacekeeper hands.

“Just this one?” I wonder, picking up the lone page, and I tilt my head toward the notebook. “The rest is…okay?”

To my surprise, he blushes crimson and snatches up the notebook, then he gets up from his chair so quickly that he almost knocks it over and hurries back to the bedside drawer to stash away the notebook once more. _It’s not that kind of dangerous,_ he writes on his slate when he returns.

I try to think what could be so embarrassing about a notebook kept at one’s bedside – Pollux won’t be writing letters, and it’s unlikely to be a journal – and then I remember what happens in bed between married people and blush just as hotly as Pollux did a moment ago. “ _Oh,_ ” I say, hoping desperately that he didn’t – correctly – perceive my delayed response as ignorance, and receive a stilted chuckle in reply.

 _Let’s just say,_ he writes, _there are certain moments when I desperately miss being able to speak._

Pollux sets to his breakfast with a vigor that implies a late – or perhaps, very _busy_ – night, and I return downstairs to feed our conversation to the stove, set aside my cap and jacket, and begin work on my deerskin. After a lavish New Year’s Day filled with feasting and leisure and rich presents, I expect a return to rough work, to the smells of hide and hay, to be a bracing sort of comfort, like the bitter solution of baking soda and water that Seam folk drink on Parcel Day – the one day when the very luckiest of them can enjoy a full meal and, more often than not, suffer for it because of their shrunken stomachs – and to begin with, it _is_.

It feels good to have Granny Ashpet’s hide scraper in my hands, to press its blade into my buck’s coat in deep, thorough strokes and peel away the hair and the thin layer of skin beneath; a crucial step to ensuring a successful brain-tan. Hazelle recommended draping the skin over a log or tall stump for this part, like Granny Ashpet did when she fleshed her doeskins in my dream, and I found a stout length of trunk in the woodpile that serves well enough, stripped of its bark on one side and propped back against my thighs. If I do this again – if I get another deer – I’ll enlist Pollux’s help in making a proper scraping post, but I’m behind in my work as it is and don’t want any further delays. Tanning a deerskin is a strenuous, time-consuming, painstaking process – Hazelle was very clear about that in her instructions – and there are countless opportunities to mess up; to damage the hide or turn it into a stiff sort of leather instead of the supple golden velvet that currently sheets my bed, and this deerskin is for Peeta. I can’t afford, nor will I tolerate, any mistakes on my part.

I adjust the hide as I go, drawing it a little higher up the trunk as I clear away each patch of hair so I don’t need to reach as far with the blade or apply extra force wastefully, but the deerskin is seemingly endless in breadth and my wrists and forearms begin to ache after just ten minutes of scraping. I remind myself of what I’m working toward, of how lovely the finished product will be and who it’s intended for, but still I feel myself growing cross and irritable.

More than anything, I’m malcontent, a state of mind that would have been a luxury even one month ago. _Dis_ contentment is another matter: it’s our natural state in the Seam – and probably everywhere else in Panem, if the Capitol has anything to say about it. There’s _never_ quite enough – food, clothing, or fuel for the fires – but you get used to it, like a constant ache in your joints or holes in your shoes.

But what I’m feeling now is not something I can get used to, not without going completely mad. I’m not simply unsatisfied with the state of things: I’m _vexed_ by them. Bothered to distraction, like when you’ve been in the Meadow in autumn and a pricker from the long grasses works its way down into your stocking. You can take off your shoe and root for the offending seed half a dozen times and still not find it, or any sort of comfort, and you end up limping home because of one tiny, aggravating thing.

It’s exactly that sort of irritation that’s bothering me now, but I can’t imagine where it’s coming from or why. I’m happy for Pollux and Lavinia to have found and fallen in love with each other, to have enjoyed what must have been the most beautiful toasting ceremony in Twelve’s history, to be sharing this fairytale home and Peeta as a companion and protector – and yet I’m strangely cross at the same time. Cross that they should have had each other’s arms last night and woken up in them this morning. And since they were wed by toasting, it’s likely that they know the whole of the ribbon tradition. Lavinia will be wearing her red ribbon today, very likely woven into her hair by her husband, all unhurried and tender, as he sat beside her on their bed.

And somewhere in the Seam, Peeta’s sweetheart sits on her broken-down old sofa, surrounded by all the pretty gifts he sent her and preening like a princess while he cooks and bakes for his servants without even a handkerchief of hers to tuck away in his pocket and cherish.

As angry as all of these thoughts make me, I’m angrier still at myself for feeling this way. I enjoyed a luxurious New Year’s and a subsequent feast of a breakfast, all but fed to me on the kitchen worktop. I was showered with the most wonderful presents from everyone I know: sugar plums, fine soap, a hand-knitted shawl, a whimsical stocking cap, a tanning frame, a stockingful of sweets, a painting of me with my favorite mourning dove, and a pearl; a precious jewel on a silver chain, tucked safely beneath my sweater even now. What more could I want?

Without warning, memories of a very particular New Year’s flood my mind and I duck my hot face as the sorrow and shame of that day return in full force. I was five years old and Prim one and a half, toddling and babbling and curly-haired; the apple of our mother’s eye and well on her way to stealing Dad’s heart too. I liked my little sister well enough; she was a good baby and as sweet as they come, but I could feel my parents’ attention steadily drawing away from me. Not from dislike or disinterest, of course – Prim needed more care and cuddling, more toting-about, more watchful eyes – but it hurt a little nonetheless, especially on Mom’s part.

If it hadn’t been for Prim, I’m sure I would never have dared to expect something so wildly impossible.

Dad was fully aware of their shifting priorities with a baby in the house and went out of his way to ensure that I felt every bit as special and important as my pretty little sister. If Mom was holding Prim, more often than not he would pick me up himself or crouch down to my level and play with me. I was still his favorite; his willow catkin, and he wasted no opportunity to tell me so.

The Sunday after that year’s Harvest Festival, the four of us went into town to walk around the square and look at the shop windows, newly filled with eye-catching sweets and gifts for New Year’s. Prim, snugly nestled in Mom’s arms, was as fair and rosy-cheeked as any Merchant child and attracted indulgent smiles from passers-by with her musical laughter and delighted squeals as she reached out to catch snowflakes in her little mittened hands. The snow was deep already, too deep for my sister’s short, chubby legs, and Dad lifted me up so my feet rested on his boots – _so you can use me as a pair of snowshoes,_ he teased, a happy rumble against the top of my stocking cap as he caught up my hands in his – and together we trekked past one beautiful shop window after another. Richly spiced sausages at the butcher’s; plump apples and oranges in jaunty baskets at the grocer’s; the very first sugar plums of the season, glinting in their foil wraps from the sweet-shop window; and finally the eagerly anticipated mercantile.

The mercantile is everyone’s favorite storefront at holiday-time. As the largest shop in town, they have three broad windows to fill and each is tailored to a different kind of recipient. The first pane is always set with gifts for men – caps and scarves, fine soaps, shaving brushes, and the like – the second, a favorite destination for Merchant couples and wistful Seam girls, features dresses and baubles and pretty hair-ornaments, and the third, most wonderful of all, is filled with toys and dolls and little games.

Long before the Dark Days, Dad told us, there had been entire _shops_ dedicated solely to the sale of toys, but the closest our imaginations could ever come to such a vision was the mercantile’s fairytale of a children’s display at holiday-time. No Seam child ever truly expected to receive a toy from that window, but that didn’t stop you looking, and that Sunday I looked longer and harder than ever. There was a beautiful plush bear in center of the display – a proper stuffed animal, the likes of which only the richest Merchant families can afford – and I hopped down off Dad’s feet to get a closer look, pressing my nose to the icy pane and leaving little steam-clouds on the glass. The bear was _perfect_ : just the right size for my arms, with bright black eyes and downy “fur” the color of freshly fallen snow and a cheery red ribbon tied around his neck.

 _What would you like Father Christmas to bring you, catkin?_ Dad asked softly, his hand settling on my capped head in a caress, but the answer, I was sure, was obvious. I wanted to find that bear beside our living room fire on New Year’s morning; for him to be my very own, and I would hold him every night when I went to bed and tell him stories and squeeze my eyes shut as I burrowed my face greedily into his soft fur.

I understood money a little, even then, and knew that my father was a skillful trader. He’d once bought me a broken bit of peppermint from the sweet-shop, quite literally, for a song, so there was no doubt in my mind that he could get me that bear. I was young enough to believe in fairy tales, or at least the possibility of them, and my father was the hero in several. Wily, winsome, lucky Jack, like his namesake in Granny Ashpet’s favorite stories; I was certain he had a magic pail hidden away somewhere, perpetually spilling over with pennies, or perhaps a pair of enchanted boots that the shoe shop would take for a handsome sum.

When the bear disappeared from the window display on New Year’s Eve, I could barely contain my excitement.

My father outdid himself with gifts for me that year. On New Year’s morning I ran to the fireside to find a matchbox full of stick-dollies and a little cottage for them to live in, with tiny furniture cobbled from bark and pinecones and even a shelf of acorn “cups” to serve as dishes. There were puppets made from a pair of Dad’s stockings, with bits of bric-a-brac for hair and bright button eyes, and even a little sack of gumdrops – Dad’s favorite sweet and a rare indulgence indeed – but no stuffed bear.

In hindsight, the very least I could have done was tell my father that I wanted the bear. He would have explained straightaway that we couldn’t afford it, and the foolish child I was at the time would have been heartbroken and probably stolen a few last longing looks at the mercantile display, but I would have understood one of life’s bitter lessons a little sooner and been overjoyed with the gifts Dad worked long and hard to craft on his precious Sundays in the woods.

Instead, I watched everyone else open their presents, especially Prim – half-expecting our besotted mother to have bought the thing I most wanted in all the world and given it to my sister instead – and when no bear appeared, I searched every corner of the house on my hands and knees, convinced that my father had kept the best present for last and it was a game for me to find it. After a half-hour of fruitless and increasingly desperate searching, I returned to curl up in front of the living room fire in a heap of sooty fingers and tears and heartbreak.

Dad picked me up in a heartbeat and cradled me in his arms, daubing my wet eyes with a soft red handkerchief that smelled of pine. He tried to cajole me with the gumdrops and stick-dollies and even put one of the puppets on his hand and began telling me an old tale in a silly voice, but I didn’t want that; any of it. At that moment I didn’t want my father at all, and I fought my way out of his arms and ran to the bedroom to bury my head beneath my pillow.

As I ran I heard Mom say _Let her go; she’ll calm down,_ but Dad had always known me better, and no sooner had the pillow settled against my neck than I felt his hand on my back, his long fingers curling and uncurling in soothing, gentle strokes as he sat down beside me. _Catkin,_ he whispered, and even through the pillow his voice sounded _broken_ , like the tears he hid in the curve of Mom’s neck. _Oh catkin, my little sweetheart. What more did you want?_

I sobbed even harder at this and burrowed my head deeper beneath the pillow, but I didn’t pull away from his touch. As disappointed and angry as I was, I was even more upset for feeling that way. I knew that my father had made me beautiful things – I’d watched him assemble a stick-dolly once before and the process had been no less than magical – and he’d bought me costly sweets besides. He’d given me a _wealth_ of wonderful presents, and if I hadn’t seen and fallen in love with that stupid stuffed bear, I would have been over the moon at my gifts and playing with them beside the fire, not crying my heart out under a pillow.

I finally crawled out of my burrow, still crying, to curl my arms around Dad’s waist, and he lifted me into his lap without question and rocked me till I fell asleep, now and again dipping his head to nuzzle my cheek or press little kisses to my hair or my forehead. He didn’t ask me anything more about the presents, that day or afterward, and I was too ashamed to tell him the truth.

As time went on I consoled myself with what would surely have been that fine bear’s fate in our house. His pretty white fur would have gone gray with coal dust within a month, and of course I would have had to share him with Prim, who would have gummed up his fur with her sticky fingers and wet mouth and wailed anytime I tried to take him away for a turn at holding him.

But the memory of that New Year’s ate away at me, gnawing at my gut anytime Dad gave me a special treat, however small, and two years later I was in the woods with him, foraging for wild plums to sell to the sweet-shop, when he said he’d take me to the mercantile and I could pick out a new hair ribbon with a portion of our profits – Prim’s hair had since grown long enough for pigtails and was causing a substantial dent in our ribbon supply, he teased – and the story of the bear tumbled out in a rush. Dad listened to every word, wide-eyed, and I fully expected him to scoff or scold me or, at the very least, tell me how silly it was to break my heart over a toy I should have known we couldn’t afford, but his response was entirely the opposite.

 _Silly?_ he said when I had finished, and he shook his head with a little smile. _What the heart wants is never silly, catkin. I know_ exactly _how you felt. You see,_ he explained, _for me, your mama was just like that bear. The prettiest girl in the district and the only child of one of the wealthiest couples in town, and the first time I saw her, all big blue eyes and hair like dandelion down, I knew she was just the right size for my arms. I picked her up a time or two when we were both very small – before her mama decided a Seam boy was unfit to hold her little girl – and it was every bit as true as I’d guessed._

 _I was the last boy she would ever have cared two pins for and the_ very _last she would ever have thought to marry,_ he said, _but still I broke my heart over her again and again, even knowing that she wasn't for me, nor would ever be. Every New Year’s I ached to weave a red ribbon into the golden crown-braid she always wore or have her tie a ribbon around my arm, marking me as her sweetheart. I wanted her for my very own, just like you wanted that bear, but I knew I didn't stand a chance._

I puzzled this over. I knew that my mother had been a Merchant’s daughter and my father was Seam-born and bred, and such unions are uncommon at best, as the parentage of my neighbors and classmates attests. But I’d always believed that Mom loved Dad in return straightaway, since she gave up her life in town and married him when she was eighteen, shortly after her last Reaping. This was the first I’d ever heard of a time when she _hadn’t_ meant to marry him.

And of course, this was nearly a decade before Peeta filled in the blanks with Mom’s Merchant sweetheart. The strong blond baker’s boy who had threaded those precious sweetheart ribbons through her braids and wanted so badly to marry her.

 _But you got her,_ I told my father at last, my childish logic stubbornly taking over. _And someone else got my bear._

He bent to press a lingering kiss to the top of my head. _I’d have moved mountains if I knew, catkin,_ he said solemnly, and I knew it was true. If there had been a way to get me that bear, wily, winsome, lucky Jack would have found it. _And I wouldn’t be too upset about it,_ he added, smiling once more. _When something is meant to be yours, it finds its way to you._

 _It was just a silly toy,_ I said, frowning. _And it’s long gone._

 _What the heart wants is never silly,_ he reminded me gently. _And as for the rest: don’t be so sure. You see, I had finally given up on your mama, well and truly, when I came home from the mines to find her on my doorstep. That would have been wonderment enough, and then some, but then she kissed me before I could so much as say hello and told me that she wanted me for her husband._

I gaped at this. My mother has never been bold in her gestures of affection, and the idea of her appearing on my father’s doorstep and kissing him without invitation or explanation – let alone proposing marriage to him – was about as bizarre as rain falling upward.

Dad laughed at my expression and took my face in his hands. _Don’t despair, catkin,_ he said, stroking my cheeks with his thumbs, and his gray eyes were soft with wisdom and secrets. _When something is meant to be yours, it finds its way to you. Sometimes all you have to do is be patient and open your arms._

“Katniss?”

I start at the sound of Peeta’s voice, seemingly at my shoulder, and look up to see him framed in the workshop doorway, wrapped in his bearskin with a hamper in his hands.

A bear with bright eyes and fur the color of freshly fallen snow. Just the right size for my arms.

 _When something is meant to be yours,_ echoes my father’s voice, like a whisper on the wind, _it finds its way to you. Sometimes all you have to do is be patient and open your arms._

 _But there’s no red ribbon,_ I retort silently, scowling at the foolish – no, _ridiculous_ – direction of my thoughts. Peeta Mellark is neither my bear nor my sweetheart. _Did you really think it would be that easy?_ chides a cruel voice in my mind.

I pause in my work and straighten my spine with a groan. “It can’t possibly be lunchtime yet,” I say, and return to my scraping before my back can get too comfortable. I’ve worked around to the skin from the buck’s belly, and even if I couldn’t tell by feel, Hazelle warned that it’s thinner and easier to mar. I don’t have much of the hide left to strip but I can’t afford any distractions just now, and it’s hardly time for a meal.

“It is if you’re hungry,” Peeta replies, and the gentleness in his voice stills my hands and draws my gaze in spite of my determined effort to keep working. “Anyway, it’s a cold lunch,” he says with a crooked smile, patting the side of the hamper, “for the most part, anyway, and it’ll keep as long as you need. I came out now because I know you’ve missed your work these past couple of days and I thought maybe I could help.”

His eyes are willing and downright hopeful, this impossible boy with his white fur and his ribbons, and I don’t know which is worse: the idea of those good Merchant hands – hands that should be kneading dough or frosting cakes or painting a beautiful picture – tanning a deerskin, or the idea of him working on his own present. “I don’t think so,” I retort with more venom than is strictly necessary and feel a twinge in my heart as the hope-light fades from his eyes, though not the willingness to help. I wonder if this is the face his mother sees and feel even worse.

“Anyway, I was thinking I might work through lunch today,” I tell him, “and just have something small later on.”

“I know you’re upset, Katniss,” he says quietly, “but I’m not sure why, and that makes it even worse. If there’s something I can do or that I should have done, _please_ tell me.”

 _There isn’t,_ I think bitterly. I’m no longer a foolish five-year-old to look through a Merchant’s window and want something impossible, so badly that I can’t appreciate all the good things around me.

Not even this bright-eyed bear with his soft, snowy fur, just the right size for my arms.

“Why don't you go pester Pollux for a while?” I suggest bitingly. “You two seem to have a lot to talk about.”

I shoot him a meaningful look at this and the last whisper of light is snuffed from his face like a pinched candle-flame. He knows that I know about the marriage and, more importantly, that he’s kept it from me all this while.

“Okay,” he says softly. His voice is even but I can hear the grief and apology curling in at its edges. “You’re probably right. Pollux is behind this morning as it is, and he could use the help catching up after the holiday.”

He walks away and my heart splits in two.

I can’t do this. Can’t hurt this sweet boy, no matter what he’s done – keep another’s dangerous secret? shower me with gifts, even though I’m not his longed-for sweetheart? – and then just go about my business, smug and scowling and even more upset than I was to begin with.

“Peeta,” I choke, little louder than a whisper, but he’s back in a heartbeat, his eyes soft with compassion and hopeful once more. He comes into the shop without hesitation and sets down his meal hamper, then he eases the hide scraper from my hands to set on the workbench and carefully moves aside the trunk and the deerskin.

He’s going to hold me, I realize. Standing in this workshop, my hands grubby with deer hairs and sticky bits of skin and my boots covered to their ankles with fallen clumps of the buck’s coat. “I'm filthy,” I warn, but it’s a weak protest.

“I don’t care,” he says quickly, almost urgently, and then his strong arms are around my waist, crossing over my back as he draws me to him. I sink blissfully into his welcoming warmth and close my eyes as I burrow my face into the juncture of silky rabbit fur and plush bearskin at his shoulder. _What more did you want, catkin?_ I ask myself with a contented sigh. _A white bear in your arms the day after New Year’s and no one to share him with for a good long while. All you wanted was a friend to hold and cuddle and tell stories to; surely this is all of that and more besides?_

He nuzzles the side of my head like a blind pup, working his mouth up to my ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about them,” he whispers, so close and quiet that I feel more than hear his words; a moist heat in the tender curve of my ear that courses down my spine in a shiver, raising the fine hairs at the nape of my neck and prickling my torso from shoulders to breasts in fiercely pleasant goosebumps. “About Pollux and Lavinia.”

“I know why you didn’t,” I murmur in reply, leaning up a little to press my words against his jaw. This part of our exchange, I know, is about silence, not intimacy, no matter how exquisite it feels to be entwined like honeysuckle vines and whispering secrets into each other’s skin. “It’s not that.”

I root along his fur-wrapped neck till I find a nice hollow for my face, then I settle against him with another, deeper sigh and tell him what I wish I could have told my father when I was five: the truth behind my strange mood, or most of it, without admitting any foolish longing for something I knew I couldn’t have. “I’m out of sorts today,” I say. “It’s not your fault; nothing you've done at all. You gave me the most wonderful New Year’s, full of delicious food and…and sweetness and beautiful presents. I just…” I shake my head against him. “Every so often I go a little crazy, I guess,” I say, “and want impossible things.”

His breath catches in an eager little hitch. “Like what?” he asks, inching one hand higher up my back to fish out my left braid from where it lies between us and draw it carefully back over my shoulder; to stroke its length with slow, gentle fingers. “Katniss, whatever you want, I’ll give it to you,” he assures me, and the caress of his fingers along my childish pigtail is the most exquisite thing I’ve ever felt in my life. “ _Anything,_ ” he promises. “Anytime. _Please_ tell me what it was that you wanted.”

I shake my head again, fiercely this time, and hide my warming face in his bearskin. “Like I said: _impossible_ things,” I tell him. “Things that can’t be bought with money or given away for the asking.”

“You might be surprised,” he murmurs, and the words remind me strikingly of my father, of his _Don’t be so sure_ that my bear was lost to me forever. “A Victor’s winnings can save a district from starvation and give two Avoxes a rich new life, right under the Capitol’s nose,” he reminds me. “They can buy a business, stock a pantry with wonders, and even bring the woods indoors.”

He’s right, I realize. A Victor’s winnings _can_ work magic, after a fashion. Peeta’s money turned a miner’s widow into a thriving apothecary and her daughter into the huntress-moon. Living in a fairytale log home in a pristine, game-filled woods; wearing a coat lined with fur and a pearl at my throat; bathing in waterfalls and sleeping between sheets of golden deerskin: these things are as impossible as a hearty meal was a month ago and yet Peeta’s winnings have brought them to fruition, seemingly without any sort of difficulty.

But what I wanted – or some foolish part of me _thought_ that it wanted – can’t be purchased for any sum. Money can buy a thousand red ribbons but not a sweetheart to wear them; something Peeta surely knows better than anyone.

“That’s as may be,” I reply, trying to sound lofty and wise, but the words come out small and weary and sad. “But some things have to be won, not bought.”

Peeta inhales sharply and stiffens in my arms. “You…you mean…” he rasps, then the tension melts from his body as quickly as it came on, but it feels like a slump of defeat, not relief. “ _Oh_ ,” he whispers. A low, mournful, strangely familiar moan leaves his lips and his arms drop away from my back.

It’s like being pulled from my bed of deerskin and furs and thrown naked into a snowbank. Up till now my arms have been loosely looped about his waist so my hands wouldn’t muck up his bearskin, but at this I snug them like a knot and press myself so hard against him that he would have to cut me away to get free. “Please don’t,” I plead, foolishly, but his rejection is something I don’t think I can survive, and the loss of his embrace hurts like an open wound.

He gives a ragged sort of chuckle and curls an arm around my shoulders, but not nearly as tightly as he held me just moments before. “If…if it’s a sweetheart you’re sad about,” he says, “me holding you isn’t really going to help matters.”

This time I pull back, as quickly as if I’ve been burned. “ _Sweetheart?_ ” I echo, gaping. “What are you talking about?” He doesn’t know – _can’t_ know – the ridiculous thoughts that filled my head before breakfast, and as such his remark makes no sense whatsoever.

“Well,” he says, reddening a little. “You, um…you seemed upset earlier when you told me you didn’t have any sweethearts, so I thought maybe…Gale Hawthorne,” he finishes in a little rush. “His mother sent you a New Year’s gift of sorts but he didn’t even send you a ribbon, so –”

“ _Gale?_ ” I break in, finally finding my voice. “Why on earth would he send me _anything_ , let alone a ribbon? The Hawthornes are poor as dirt, and even if they weren’t, Gale’s hardly the sort of boy for ribbons and sweethearts.”

Peeta frowns. “But…but you _want_ him to be,” he puzzles, as much a question as a statement. “To send you red ribbons for your braids and –?”

“ _Gale?_ ” I say again, making a face this time. Gruff, fierce Gale, send me sweetheart ribbons? He would sooner tug my braid than caress it, and the idea of him being sentimental toward _any_ girl is so bizarre as to be laughable. “He’s my friend,” I say, “but I don’t want him for a sweetheart, and I can _guarantee_ he doesn’t want me.”

Peeta raises his brows as though he doesn’t quite believe me, but the expression in his eyes is halfway between relief and confusion. “But…if it wasn’t Gale,” he says slowly, “who _did_ you want for your New Year’s sweetheart?”

I shake my head in reply. What I wanted, or _thought_ I wanted, for those ten foolish minutes in my bedroom this morning is as ridiculous and impossible as a fairy tale coming to life. I might as well ask for the sun in human form with fat, soft honey-curls to twine around my fingers or a golden, broad-antlered buck to nuzzle my cheek and fill my belly with fawns.

Or a white bear.

A white bear with bright eyes and a coat like freshly fallen snow, soft and deep and pale as moonlight.

A white bear with a red ribbon.

I give a short laugh and wonder why it hurts so much, like a dull blade rubbing against my lungs. “A fairy tale,” I say at last, looking down at my boots and scuffing the sole of one against the concrete floor. “A silly New Year’s fancy. The boy from the woods, I suppose,” I tell him, as good an answer as any, and raise my eyes with an apologetic wince. “The – the one who kissed the snow maiden to life.”

Peeta comes to me, a strange pain in his eyes, and cups my face in his big hands. “There’s nothing silly about wanting a fairy tale, Katniss,” he says softly, “and you deserve it more than anyone.”

I shake my head against his broad palms. I should have known better than to give any sort of answer to the boy who’s just promised me anything I want, especially when it’s something I don’t want at all. I don’t want a sweetheart, a boy, a mate in my bed.

But I wanted, more than I would have thought was possible, for Peeta to be my night companion. To find my ribbon on his left arm this morning and his warm cheek on my rabbit-skin pillow tonight. To crawl across the deerskins into his sweet, musky heat and nestle my face, night after night, into the hollow of his throat.

“Katniss,” he breathes, and his thumbs are on my cheeks, gently stroking the hollows beneath my eyes which have somehow, suddenly, grown damp. “Why are you crying?” he whispers.

 _Because I love you,_ whimpers a small voice from somewhere deep beneath my ribs.

 _No, you don’t,_ counters the resilient, sensible part of me that’s kept my family alive these past five years on weeds and bones and peelings, and I wonder why my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s wing. _You’re dazzled by ribbons and oranges and a pearl on a silver chain; by a fairytale New Year’s in a palace of wood and stone and a first kiss by the fireside. By tomorrow Peeta Mellark will be nothing more than the stocky, good-natured boy from the bakery that you never made eye contact with, let alone talked to, and you’ll have forgotten all of this sweetheart nonsense._

Except I know I _won’t_ , as the tears slipping between my lashes make all too clear. _This_ is why I worked so hard and carefully on that muffler. Why I sat in the snow on New Year’s Eve, freezing honey buttons and toasting pine bark. Why I gave Peeta my father’s precious handkerchief and filled his right shoe with bits of pine for his fire. Why I charged into a volley of snowballs to knock him to the ground and shield him with my body and why I begged him to lie down with me after we shared our New Year’s orange.

Why I kissed him, and why I felt so desperately that I _had_ to. It wasn’t about ribbons or tradition, though both provided the opportunity.

I love him.

I love Peeta Mellark, as deeply and hopelessly as my poor father loved my wealthy mother but without any chance of him ever loving me in return. Dad was everything a girl would love: handsome, resourceful, and brimming with tales, with the most beautiful singing voice in the district to boot, and even if I possessed _half_ of those qualities, Peeta still wouldn’t consider me for his sweetheart. He loves another – another Seam girl – with all of his heart and prepared this fairytale home just for her. However wonderfully he’s treated me, I’m ultimately a guest in this house: welcome to his meals and fire and other comforts but with no more claim on his heart than the chipmunk he feeds on the back steps or the birds in the garden.

I bring my hands to his and rub my tears against his palms – one last greedy indulgence in the cradle of that sweet, broad warmth – before tugging his hands down and pushing away from him. “I’m fine,” I tell him weakly. “Completely fine. I-It’s nothing.”

He shakes his head at this, already reaching to bring me into his arms, but I can’t go back there, back to stolen lungfuls of bread and fur and boy-musk, and I step beyond his reach, wiping my wet eyes on my sleeve. “I’m okay,” I lie through a sniffle. “I promise. Wh-why don’t you lay out lunch and…and I’ll finish up in here. I’ve only got a little of the skin to scrape still, and I can do the brain-tan after we eat.”

He frowns, clearly unconvinced, but I nod emphatically and retrieve the hamper for him, pressing its handle into his hands. “I’m _fine_ , Peeta,” I insist. “Let me finish this last little bit of scraping and then I’ll take a break with you, okay?”

“Please don’t push me away, Katniss,” he says quietly. “If you’re upset or hurting, _please_ let me help.”

“I’m not,” I answer brightly, and the lie is so bitter that it chokes me. “So the best way you can help is by laying out our lunch, so I can eat quickly and get back to work.”

He shifts the hamper to one hand and raises the other to my cheek. “If you’re sure,” he says, his voice soft and low with concern, and I nod in reply. “Entirely sure,” I tell him with a feeble attempt at a smile, and he strokes my cheek with his fingertips before going out into the stable.

 _One minute,_ I tell myself when he’s gone, and I duck out the back door without reaching for my jacket. _You can have one minute, and no more._

I huddle into a small ball at the base of the woodpile, bury my face in my forearms, and count back from sixty as I empty my broken heart in wet, guttural sobs. For this one precious minute, I don’t let myself think of anything but the pain of wanting something I can never, _ever_ have. Fat yellow curls between my fingers, warm breath scented with oranges, soft lips and strong arms. Tousled covers and musky bare skin and a mouth seeking mine in the darkness. My mate in our bed and his twins in my arms.

Not mine. _Never_ mine. _Not for me, not for me, not for me…_

 _But you don’t want that,_ I soothe myself when the minute is past, though my breath still comes in damp, shaky pants. _Not truly._ There are a dozen kinds of love, after all, and just because I love Peeta, it doesn’t mean I want him for a sweetheart and lover and husband, let alone that I want to have his children.

_Sweet chubby babes with milky skin and honey-curls, toddling through the garden and tumbling onto the furs…Peeta’s eyes in a dark little Seam face…squeals of delight and sticky little hands filled with crumbled shortbread…_

There’s the love I have for Prim: a fierce, protective thing, like a cougar’s for her cub, and the love I still carry for my father; a blend of adoration and absolute trust that makes my heart cry out to think of it. The fragile, hungry love I have for my mother: the yearning of a neglected or long-overlooked thing for the smallest tender word or gesture, and the love I have for Pollux and Lavinia, an unexpected but comforting sort of affection, borne out of gentle teasing and quiet camaraderie.

What I feel for Peeta might be a combination of these loves or another kind entirely. I think of shielding him in the snow, of my grief at his pain in the Games and my terror at the thought of further harm coming to him, of my urge to keep him warm, first with my father’s scarves and then the rabbit-skin muffler. It’s a primitive, protective sort of love, not unlike what I feel for Prim, and surely appropriate coming from his huntress. Love doesn’t always mean _in_ love: aching and yearning; ribbons and kisses and toastings and babes.

 _Except,_ I realize with a mournful moan, _it does._ I want Peeta’s sweetheart ribbons in my braids – right where they are now, only threaded through the plaits by his skillful fingers – and mine tied around his left arm; a bright badge of my love for him, worn proudly. I want to sit in his lap and snug my legs around his waist as I weave my fingers through his curls and cover every inch of his sweet face with happy kisses, especially that soft mouth, and later I want us to cuddle beneath his bearskin, all laughter and kisses and twining limbs.

I want his bread on my tongue, toasted golden-brown to seal our union and dipped in wine, the way Merchant couples are wed.

I don’t fully understand what happens in a marriage bed, but I think I want that with Peeta too. His body, bare and warm and heavy, moving over me in the darkness, all quiet grunts and gasps and sighs, and his cheek on my breast afterward. Lovemaking in that broad bed of velvet deerskin and furs or maybe beneath the sunset and cedars of his own bedroom, and from that lovemaking would come babes. My flat belly rounding like a ripe fruit beneath Peeta’s big hands, then two downy little heads – one dark and one light – nuzzling my breasts, their wet, toothless mouths seeking, then suckling, in greedy contentment.

I’ve never wanted children – never _allowed_ myself to want them – in this brutal world of Games and Reapings and Peacekeepers, but in this hidden fairytale corner of Panem where Avoxes are free to love and marry and a poor Seam girl is treated like a queen, surely Peeta’s children would be safe. Victors’ children may have been sent into the arena before but good, gentle, handsome Peeta is the most beloved Victor in the history of the Hunger Games. No one could bear – or _dare_ – to bring harm to his children.

 _One minute!_ I remind myself angrily and straighten from of my crouch with the aid of the woodpile. That minute – and not these extras I’ve stolen – was intended to empty my heart of longing, so I can go back and finish my work and eat lunch with Peeta like nothing has changed. At the very least, I need to convince him that I truly _am_ fine, not upset in any way, or he’ll keep whittling away at me with his sweet words and tender little touches and I’ll break, because I _want_ all of that – the hugs and caresses and the wonderful happy kisses he presses to my hands and feet and forehead and today, the tip of my nose – _so_ badly, and if he tries to soothe me with such things the truth will just spill out and then… The rest I can scarcely imagine. Likelier than not, he’d respond with gentle pity, reminding me of what I know all too well already, but he might be offended or even angry that after everything he’s offered and given me, I could want still _more_.

I absolutely _can’t_ let him know about any of this: the love, the longing, or the grief that it will never come to pass.

I scoop up a little clean snow in shivering fingers to soothe my swollen eyes and tear-burned cheeks, then I dry my face on the heathered sleeve of the beautiful hunting sweater Peeta bought for me, savoring the gift – the money and forethought that will have gone into it as well as the impossible softness, like the lush white belly fur that edges Peeta’s muffler – with a languid rub of first one cheekbone, then the other. Peeta may never love me, but he clearly cares for me and has spared no expense in attending to my needs, and this garment is yet another token of that. The very least I can do is present him, now and again, with a finely crafted gift in return.

I return to the workshop and prop the scraping trunk against my thighs once more, and as painstakingly as I worked earlier, meticulously peeling away every last hair and bit of skin from the precious hide, I find myself taking even _more_ care now. Because I love the boy this is meant for.

As I move the scraper down the thin skin of the buck’s belly in breathlessly cautious strokes, I wonder if this is how it was for Granny Ashpet. If one day she was tanning a deerskin to sell like any other, most likely as a blanket, and the next it had become material for her bridal gown, for wedding a boy she wasn’t even aware that she loved.

Grandpa Asa was hardly a fine prospect, let alone for my striking, self-sufficient grandmother. Born the third of six children, by the time Granny Ashpet knew him he had become the eldest, with three small sisters to take care of. He was a gentle, soft-spoken boy with no love for hunting and butchering, and Dad was fond of saying that if Granny Ashpet hadn’t shot the cougar that was stalking him that fateful day in the woods, Grandpa Asa would have tried with his last breath to befriend it.

My grandfather’s first ventures into the woods were not in search of game or edible plants but materials for making toys. His family was as desperately poor as any in the Seam, and as a child he was always seeking ways of cheering up his beloved sisters; of distracting them from their ragged clothes and hollow bellies. He quickly mastered the art of scavenging Merchant bins for old, worn, or broken things – and food, of course – and brought no end of smiles to his sisters’ lean faces with bobbin-headed dollies and rag-puppets. He knew dozens of songs and tales – not the least, the one whose heroine Granny Ashpet was named for – and playacted them for his little sisters, amidst much laughter, with a cast of handmade puppets and dollies.

When the bin-pickings grew too thin, Grandpa Asa turned to the woods for new materials from which to make toys for his sisters, for branches and acorns and pinecones, and the woods embraced him like a long-lost child and showered him with its bounty. He had that sort of patient diligence which is every bit as valuable as a craft or skill, and he made increasingly finer toys from those foraged things – fine enough to sell at the Hob and sometimes even at the mercantile – while filling his pockets with fat roots and dandelion greens, wild apples and berries and plums for his family’s table.

But of course, little bodies need meat to grow and thrive and even the cheapest butcher cuts cost more than my young grandfather could afford. So he turned his gentle foraging hands to fishing, then to snares – and of course, it was on one such outing that Granny Ashpet found him, on the brink of becoming a cougar’s breakfast, and with one keen shot saved his life and won his heart.

To him, she was a fairy tale come to life: the cinder-lass of her namesake, a cougar-eyed huntress, a stubborn, sharp-tongued beauty that wanted wooing and winning – but to her he was silly, helpless, and thoroughly unexceptional. A small, slight young man who crossed the fence and braved the woods in order to make _toys_ ; if he’d been handsome, the oldest Seam folk might have suspected a fairy heritage, but with his hooked beak of a nose, unruly shock of hair and all-over plainness – to say nothing of being shorter and weaker than many of his fellows, owing to malnutrition in his early years – Grandpa Asa passed through life unremarked and overlooked by most.

 _But he had the gentlest touch,_ my father always said. Careful, patient hands that could soothe any hurt and craft wonders from the humblest materials: bark, bones, an apple peel, a dried leaf found on the stoop. Dad inherited that aptitude and enthusiasm for crafting, and his father’s gentleness too – and of course, Prim inherited it from Dad, but I’m nothing like my grandfather in those respects. As far as I can tell, the only heritage he passed on to me was a small, slight frame and a plain face; in all other ways I’m like Granny Ashpet. I’m impatient and practical and prefer hunting to handcrafts – though I suppose, like my grandmother, my hands can be tamed to quiet, homely tasks when my heart is concerned.

 _A huntress needs a gentle mate,_ Dad explained once, _a boy she can protect, and such a boy is drawn to her in turn. He loves her strength, her fierce heart and her wild beauty, and she needs his gentleness and warmth and patience, just like the sun and moon in their courtship. The huntress embodies beauty in the manner of a wild thing – a dove or a doe or even a cougar, all dusk and sinew and bright eyes – and her mate creates beauty with his hands, preparing a snug and handsome burrow for his bride and filling it with food and little gifts for her pleasure._

 _But_ you’re _the gentle one,_ I puzzled, for even as a small child I understood my parents’ dispositions well. _Does that make Mom a huntress?_

My father laughed richly at that. _No, catkin,_ he replied. _Your mother is a witch, and I have my suspicions about your sister. They’re a bit trickier to love than huntresses, and they require a very different sort of mate, but that’s another story altogether._

I scrape away the final patch of hair with a little sigh and run my fingertips over the pale skin in small, thorough circles, from end-to-end and back again, seeking and removing any last remnants that might prevent the brain-tan from taking properly. As much as it is within my power, this deerskin must be _perfect._ A supple sheet of suede, smoked to a rich golden hue, to drape around my boy’s shoulders. _To wrap him in warmth and comfort when he is sick or cold or afraid…_

My huntress grandmother fell in love with a toymaker, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would love a baker’s son: a gentle, soft-spoken boy with lips full of tales and hands that spin wonders from charcoal and paint; from flour and spices and tiny pots of icing as bright as jewels. Grandpa Asa would have loved Peeta and I suspect Peeta would have loved my grandfather in his turn. It’s far too easy to picture them sitting together beside the living room fire: stocky golden Peeta with a plate of festively iced cookies and a lapful of charcoal sketches and slight, plain Grandpa Asa with his whittling knife and a jumping-jack on a string, trading favorite fairy tales or laughing over stories of their fierce huntress brides.

Except I’m not Peeta’s bride, and never, _ever_ will be.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a long, determined moment and force my breath to remain steady. I’m about to sit down to lunch with Peeta, and as far as he’s concerned, things between us are the same as they’ve been since the night I chose to stay here, or maybe since that awful night when I snapped and snarled at him for not giving me tasks or any other way to repay his generosity, however crude or demeaning, and he responded not with anger but with even _more_ kindness, wrapping me up in his bearskin and holding me close as he told me that all he wanted in the world was my happiness.

I wonder if that was when I first began to love him. Sitting by his fire, wrapped in his bearskin, with his face pressed, brow to nose tip, to mine.

We’ve had a pleasant sort of friendship since then – no, _beyond_ pleasant: a leisurely morning of cookie-baking and dumpling soup and another of filling the trees with holiday treats for his beloved birds, a skating lesson, a shared New Year’s orange, a nap in his arms, even a kiss – but some things haven’t changed and never will. Peeta loves his Seam girl, as he’s done for as long as he can remember, and regardless of whether or not I love him, I’m still – and always will be – his huntress and companion.

But now that I think of it: the fact that I love Peeta, whether he knows it or not, can only benefit him. A worker with no real attachment to their employer will perform their duties adequately at best, maybe even poorly if they especially dislike or resent that employer – my father saw this often with young miners, who undercut productivity wherever possible to spite their foremen and the Capitol by extension – and will change their loyalty at the first offer of better wages, easier tasks, or more comfortable working conditions. But a worker who loves her master will give him only the most exemplary service, no matter what he asks of her and what wages he offers. She will go out of her way to please him, anticipating duties he hasn’t assigned and happily performing them without additional compensation, and she will never leave his side.

I will be the best companion Peeta could ever wish for and a dedicated huntress besides, bringing him the very finest game and fish and furs to be found in these woods. I will feast him on its bounty and wrap him in its warmth, and when winter is over I’ll bring him other gifts from its tangled paths: speckled eggshells and fallen feathers and fistfuls of flowers for every desk and table and mantle in his house. Silly gifts – _sweetheart_ gifts – but Peeta cherishes the humblest woodland findings and surely he’ll be none the wiser as to the intent behind them.

And more than this, I’ll protect him: from harm, of course, and all manner of dangers, but also from sickness and loneliness and fear. I’ll bring home furs to keep him snug and warm – _so_ many furs, and deerskins and goose down besides, to bundle him up to his bright eyes – and prepare rich, nourishing broths from the bones of my kills, with wild onions and garlic to fight any sort of infection. When the weather turns warm, I’ll cut lavender and calendula in the woods and harvest wild honey and beeswax to make a salve for the little kitchen burns that now and again glare angrily from the pale skin of his hands and forearms, and his leg…I don’t know what it requires – hot bricks wrapped in flannel, gentle massage, a soak in soothing herbs – but I’ll find out and supply it, gladly. I’ll even help bathe him if he needs it; my sweet, wounded boy.

And in-between I’ll brace and shield him with my small body and guard him with my bow and knives. Peeta’s endured far too much already; he won’t suffer so much as a head cold on my watch. I’ll be there the moment he sneezes to wrap him soundly – up to his eyes in thermals and flannel and soft wool and furs – and feed him hot broths and pine needle tea, and when the food is gone I’ll spoon myself against his broad back and keep him warm through the night with my own body heat. I’m little, but even Buttercup can warm an entire bed if allowed beneath the covers, and I’m much larger – and, I hope, more pleasant to share a bed with – than that yowling yellow cat.

It may well break my heart, but Peeta will be better served by me loving him than by an army of servants, each a master of their tasks.

I bend and press a little kiss to the deerskin, ignoring the painful tug in my chest, and head out into the stable to find Peeta on his knees in front of the now-glowing stove, his bearskin spread like a picnic blanket, laying out the last of the hamper’s contents on the fur. There’s a platter of sandwiches – yesterday’s cranberry-studded bread, toasted golden-brown and piled high with cold roast venison – and a dish of small boiled potatoes, quartered and tossed with grainy mustard and green herbs. There’s a tall flask of some sort of hot drink and a pretty little plate of iced gingerbread rabbits, a large block of yellow cheese and several smaller blocks of chocolate, and most intriguing of all: a crock, large enough to serve two, containing what surely can’t be anything but bread pudding.

 _Safe. Home. Warm and protected and loved._ Even without knowing what caused my upset this morning, Peeta couldn’t have chosen a better food to appease it.

My heart gives a wild leap, as though it means to go to him whether or not the rest of me comes along, and I wonder, for the first time, just _how_ this happened. How did I come to need and want – to _love_ – this particular boy so desperately that it hurts to stand six feet away from him?

 _How do you tame a bird?_ I asked my father once, after about five unsuccessful attempts to creep up on robins and catch them in my little hands. They flew away every time, of course, well before they were within arm’s reach, and I quickly grew red-faced and frustrated, especially as the woodland robins had seemed so _friendly_ , alighting in bright, open places and trilling their hearts out, as bold as you please.

Dad looked at me for a long moment, so long that I worried I’d upset him, then he led me over to a fallen trunk and sat down, so we were eye-to-eye, and took my hands in his. _Catching and taming are very different things, catkin,_ he said solemnly. _Catching means taking hold of a creature without its knowledge or consent – a snare or a trap or a cage – and taming is the process of getting that creature to come to you of its own accord, without any sort of restraint or coercion. Taming is the harder path, requiring great stores of patience and optimism and hope beyond hope, but the reward – an animal that loves you truly and will not fly away the moment you cut its tether or open its cage door – is well worth the effort._

I stared at him, wide-eyed at these words and the power that lay beneath them. That a wild animal could choose to come to you of its own accord… Not for the first time, I wondered if the superstitious old Seamwives had had the right of it, half-suspecting my grandfather of having fairy blood, and my father in his turn. _How do you tame a bird?_ I asked him again, my voice quiet and a little awestruck as I emphasized which path I meant to take.

Dad smiled, pleased by the question this time, and leaned forward to kiss my cheek. _It begins with trust,_ he explained. _With careful movements and soft words. By your very manner, you must instill in that bird the belief, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you will never bring it harm of any kind._

 _Once a bird trusts you with its safety,_ he went on, _it will come to you for food. And when it discovers that you can be relied upon for food, soon you will find it seeking you out even when you have none, simply for your company. It will linger nearby, in the branches above your head or in the grass near your feet, as you go about your business, and now and again it will draw closer still in curiosity to see how you pull fish from the water with a string on a stick or make a porridge from hard-shelled acorns._

 _And one day,_ he concluded in a voice as soft as shadow, _if you are very lucky, this quiet companionship will burst into bloom as affection and you will feel the bird alight on your hand or shoulder, seeking your touch on their feathers and giving their own – beak-nuzzles and preening – in return. With such affection comes devotion – the need to be near you always, or as often as they can – and that is the purest sort of love._

I gaze down at Peeta, whose blond head is still bent over our meal. _Devotion,_ I think, strangely pleased to have found a name for this love, and remember myself as a small brown bird, nuzzling his chest with my little head and bedding down in the hollow of his throat. How my starving dream-self came to him for crumbs and was given a luxurious new life besides. The boy whose hands could have crushed me with ease instead held me close, tucking me beneath his bearskin as he bore me to his home. Those gentle hands then prepared a feast just for me, and at some point before my arrival – in anticipation of it – brought the woods indoors with pine-patterned walls, a fireplace of wild rock and a bed of dark wood and furs, so I might make my nest in a familiar place, full of warmth and safety.

No wonder I moved swiftly from despair and hunger to chirping merry songs and preening his curls, though in the end I wished no other nest than his body; than his warm skin and soft yellow hair and the steady drumbeat of his impossibly good heart, pulsing against my downy belly.

Bird-Katniss sang for her boy after one delicious meal, but it took little more – three leisurely golden days of comfort and sweetness and a steady stream of the richest, most wonderful food imaginable – for me to sing in Peeta’s presence and less time than that for me to hug him. To come to him of my own volition; to seek his touch on my feathers; to nuzzle him with my beak and long to preen his curls. That night – the night I told Peeta the tale of the huntress-moon and chose to stay with him rather than return to my family – was the beginning of something I didn’t understand until this very moment, though it will have been obvious to anyone with eyes to see.

I am a wild creature, and was never more so than when I first came to live here. I was more lynx or blackbird or rangy, hollow-bellied fox kit than human girl, made fierce and feral by poverty and hunger, and somehow, in one short month, this sweet boy has tamed me.

I should be furious. In truth, I’ve been captured by his gentleness. His soft words and little touches, his fine gifts and hearty meals have caught me as soundly as any snare. Without warning, I’ve been bound to this boy, so tightly and inextricably that I suspect it would kill me to part from him.

Except it’s not his fault; not his doing in any way. All Peeta wanted was a companion: a mourning dove or chipmunk or spring peeper of his very own to sit beside him and converse in quiet chirps or barks or coos; to share his meals and bleed the loneliness from these long, silent hours of solitude. He sought only to tame me, to offer food and companionship while letting me come to him at my own pace and of my own accord. The food and clothing – _everything_ he’s given me, down to my New Year’s pearl on its silver chain – have been true _gifts_ , freely given without expectation or desire for repayment, and certainly not intended to coerce or entrap.

It was me who made a tether of his sweetness and a cage of his strong arms. Me, who fell in love with him.

The last thing Peeta could possibly want is my love, but it’s here and it’s his, whole and entire. I feel _radiant_ with it: on fire from within, and the little flame-tongues lap at my heart, burning me in sharp, quick bursts as they flicker and dance, ever more wildly, as I draw closer to him, but I can’t put them out and _wouldn’t_ , even if I knew how.

My shadow falls across the bearskin, making Peeta look up at last, and his face is aglow with delight. “Katniss!” he cries, as happily as if I’ve brought him a present. “I’m so sorry to take you away from your work, but after all that hide-scraping, I thought you might like a break,” he says. “I’ve brought some of your favorite foods, and I won’t keep you a moment longer than you wish.”

In this light his curls are the exact pearlescent, buttery yellow of the grocer’s costly ears of sweet corn, and I want nothing more than to sink to my knees on the fur and bury my fingers to the knuckles in those fat, sunny spirals; to twine them about my fingers and laugh as they coil back to his scalp when released, then kiss the tip of his nose for good measure.

“I’ll go get a blanket,” I blurt, certain the flames in my chest must be roaring up, bright as new burns, into my cheeks and throat. “W-We shouldn’t get your beautiful coat dirty.”

“It’s a nest,” he counters cheerfully, bunching the fur around his hips to form a soft ledge. “Take off your boots and climb in.”

I love him. I love him. _I love him._

“Okay,” I whisper. I kick off my boots as quickly as if they, too, were on fire, and settle beside him on the bearskin, tugging its edge up behind me.

Peeta laughs, the sort of delighted laugh I imagine I would hear beneath the coverlets as we twine and tangle and slip tickling fingers beneath the hem of each other’s shirt and press swift, sneaky kisses into the curve of each other’s neck, the kind that always made my mother squirm and squeal when my father surprised her in such a fashion.

I love Peeta’s laugh and want to hear it often. Want to draw it effortlessly, again and again, with my words and my scowls and my fingertips, dancing around his navel and scurrying up his ribs like an eager mousekin.

“Hello, little songbird,” he says, and his smile is so wide that his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Have you come to share my lunch?”

“Yes please,” I reply, playfully dutiful, and Peeta beams as he hands me a plate.

“This is the last of our breakfast leftovers,” he explains as he scoops out a generous half of the crock’s contents for me. “Sticky bun bread pudding. It’s just like the regular kind except you use leftover sticky buns, cut into bite-sized pieces, instead of stale bread, and I minced up our leftover peaches and apples and threw them in as well. Grandma Lydda always baked extra sticky buns at New Year’s just so she could make this for breakfast the next morning,” he recalls, “and even after all the butter cookies and sugar cookies and ginger cake with hot custard, it was still the best thing you’d ever tasted. She baked it in little individual crocks, just right for small hungry grandsons, and always served it with a splash of cream, but I’ve come up with something even better.”

He reaches into the hamper with a grin and produces a second crock with a flourish, this one containing a frosty little mountain of snow ice cream, liberally flecked with nutmeg. “Freshly made!” he declares as he scoops out two heaping spoonfuls and deposits them atop my portion of bread pudding with merry aplomb. “I meant to keep it for dessert but I thought you might like to have it with everything else, while the pudding is still warm.”

Warm sticky bun bread pudding, rich with tender cooked fruits, with nutmeg snow ice cream and a Peeta Mellark who is beside himself with happiness to serve it to me. I love him so much that it _hurts_. Like two clenched fists have taken up residence on either side of my heart and are pressing steadily inward, as though they mean to crush it like a walnut.

Oblivious to this, Peeta fills my plate with the largest sandwich and the plumpest, most heavily seasoned potatoes – he takes special care to root them out with a spoon and passes over the lightly seasoned ones without hesitation – and where before I would have longed greedily for the meal, to have the plate pressed into my fingers and a forkful of delicious food in my mouth, now I ache to touch him. To inch over a handsbreath on our blanket of bearskin and rest my cheek on his shoulder or brush his hand with my fingers. It’s like when he first resumed his midday naps and I was desperate simply to _be_ with him, only _worse_. Never mind the mouthwatering sights and smells of the plate between us: I want to climb into his lap like a kitten and rub my face against his chin and throat; to lie belly-up in the crook of one strong arm and purr against his chest.

I love him and it’s ridiculous. It’s like I’ve taken leave of every sense, save for those of touch and smell, and I’m overwhelmed by what they’re telling me. _Boy-musk,_ they whimper plaintively, _and that strong, steady pulse beneath warm skin. Nutmeg and sweet buns and cream, and honey and cloves saturating those downy yellow curls…_

“Are you okay?” Peeta asks, startling me out of my reverie of longing. “You look…” He frowns in thought, attempting to decipher my expression. “Hungry,” he says at last.

He quickly places a second sandwich on my plate, another portion of potatoes, the largest pieces of chocolate and almost the entire block of cheese to boot, but that’s not at all what I’m hungry for. I’m hungry – near ravenous – for lying in his arms; for cuddling and kisses and laughter. For fingers skimming gently over warm skin, for tangled limbs and quick, soft breaths against my neck. “I’m okay,” I assure him and dip my head to hide my blush.

I need to get over this, and soon, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I _will_. What I’m feeling now is exactly what Peeta observed: _hunger._ Perhaps a different sort than I’ve ever experienced before, but I’m an expert at dealing with every variety I’ve encountered thus far. To suppressing the hollow yearning till it fades to a numb, dull ache in the pit of my stomach.

Granted, since coming to live with Peeta – who satisfies my hungers for food and warmth and companionship, sometimes even before I’m aware of them – I’ve fallen a little out of practice in self-denial, but this will be good for me, like hard exercise after a day of leisure or a breakfast of pine bark following on the heels of a feast. I’m fully aware that Peeta isn’t meant for me, no more than one of the beautifully frosted cakes in the bakery window or a fine silk dress at the mercantile, and if I have any sense, I’ll give up this foolish longing before it interferes with my work or, worse yet, Peeta begins to notice.

We eat our lunch in a companionable sort of silence, trading sips of cream-coffee – made golden and buttery-rich with leftover sticky bun sauce – from the flask after every few bites, and I blush increasingly hotter at the intimacy of sharing a drink in this fashion. We’ve shared a mug before and, of course, each finished the other’s drink on one occasion, but the mouth of the flask is narrow and it’s impossible not to put my lips in the place where his were just moments before. Impossible not to see this as another sort of kiss.

The meal is _beyond_ delicious, which would serve as a thorough distraction on any other day, but right now it’s equally impossible not to think of my love at each and every flavor. To tie the simplest ingredient to a tender memory of Peeta. To begin with, the bread of our sandwiches is studded with cranberries: the cranberries he got from town, an impossible bushel’s worth, the day I got angry at him, and yet he baked them into breads for me and simmered them in his spiced wine and helped Lavinia and me string them around his apple tree on New Year’s Eve as a treat for his birds. The first thing he gave me at our New Year’s breakfast was a slice of cranberry bread: the first slice of the loaf, spread with goat cheese and laid on my plate just moments after we embraced in front of the dining room fire in a knot of flannel-covered limbs and mussed hair and sheer joy.

 _Home,_ I thought then, and the sentiment is even truer now than it was yesterday morning. _This table spread with food and this sweet boy, rumpled and warm from his bed._

And these slices have been toasted, golden-brown as a bridegroom’s nuptial offering.

I’m half-afraid to continue eating, knowing what a simple piece of cranberry bread can do to me, but my muscles are sore and drained from my morning’s work and I need every bite of this meal to replenish them and fuel me for the rest of the day. So I eat as quickly and steadily as I can, hoping if I focus solely on filling my belly, I can ignore the memories and feelings wrapped up in each ingredient.

This becomes particularly difficult the moment I finally brave the bread pudding and snow ice cream. I’d forgotten that Peeta treats food like a language and this dish is _resonant_ with affection, with comfort and compassion and so much love that the first bite steals the breath from my lungs. The rich hues – toasting hues – and gentle spices, the whispers of caramel and sweet cream and bright ripe fruits combine to warm me like a slow sunrise, and I want more than anything to close the distance between us and finish the meal in his arms. I want us to feed each other, heady spoonfuls of spiced bread and puddles of melted snow ice cream, and then I want us to set the plates aside and just lie together, right here in front of the stove, wrapped in his bearskin with my cheek on his chest and one big hand cupping my head, cradling me to his heart.

 _I love you,_ I would whisper as soon as he fell asleep, and trace his brows and those long pale lashes and the bridge of his nose – maybe even that soft mouth – with a fingertip. _I love you so much, my strong, sweet boy._

“Come here,” Peeta says suddenly, a little hoarsely, and I look up in surprise to see him holding his arm out at his side in clear invitation. “I-I mean,” he croaks, hoarser still, and his arm sinks a little, “I just…I liked it yesterday, when we shared Rye’s cake and you leaned against me to eat, but if–”

Before he can say another word I scoot across the fur and tuck myself into the crook formed by his arm and torso. “Oh!” he gasps, but his arm settles across my back just the same, snugging me to his side. “Just like that,” he sighs, resting his cheek against my hair.

I cut a bite of pudding with my spoon and raise it to his lips. “I liked that too,” I tell him shyly.

We finish each other’s portion of pudding, trading carefully shaped spoonfuls and washing it down with sips of cream-coffee from the flask. I half expect to combust, being so close to Peeta with my heart on fire with love for him, but our proximity tempers the flames somehow. His presence – his constant, steady warmth; the musk and honey and spices that radiate from his skin; the solid muscle of his arm at my back – stirs my heart like a stove, feeding it fresh tinder and at once breaking down the wild flames and spreading them through the whole of my chest.

It feels almost deliriously good, to be held like this while sharing our meal and glowing like an ember from throat to navel, and for the second time today I tell myself _this is enough – more_ than enough, truth be told. Peeta doesn’t love me and would probably be horrified to learn that I love him, and to hope for any kind of special tenderness from him, let alone a sweetheart’s touch or gesture or token, would be greedy and just plain foolish. But to receive such a thing unexpectedly – to long to be held close and feeding each other, only to have Peeta invite me to do just that – is the most wonderful gift in the world, rarer and even more precious than the pearl at my throat.

He takes our empty plates and sets them off to the side, and it’s all I can do not to curl my arm across his chest or slip my leg over his thighs, pulling myself into his lap. Without the distraction of a plateful of food my hands itch to splay over crisp, body-warmed wool or tangle in soft yellow curls, and I’ve very nearly made up my mind to get up and run back to the safety of the workshop when Peeta murmurs, “Katniss, will your deerskin be all right for a little longer?”

I look up at him, torn inwardly by the simple question. I need to return to the deerskin and prepare the brain-tan as soon as possible, but Peeta clearly wants me to do something more now, and pressed as I am to his side with a newly kindled heart crackling merrily with love for him, it’s entirely beyond my power to refuse him anything. “For…for a _little_ longer,” I hedge. I’ll give him anything he asks of me and more besides, but not at the cost of his gift, on which I’ve already worked so hard. “What did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking a walk in the woods might be nice,” he says. “Or a ski.”

His lips are smiling but his eyes are somber and fixed on mine, and I understand at once what he’s really asking. He wants to talk to me away from the bugs – the transmitters embedded in the timbers around us – most likely about Pollux and Lavinia.

A half hour ago I would have snarled at this request and knowing what I do now – knowing how I feel for Peeta – I _should…_ but _oh_ , to be in his arms or hold him in mine as we whisper through the woods…! _The deerskin can wait,_ I resolve, and answer him accordingly. “A ski sounds nice,” I reply, as casually as I can manage. “Provided it’s not too long.”

I know it’s just my imagination, but he looks as delighted as I feel.

We tidy up our lunch things, then Peeta shakes out his bearskin and slips it back on with a shy little smile. “Do…do you want to try out your new skis?” he asks. “Or, um…would you rather–?”

“I’d like to ride along with you,” I say, staring determinedly at his chin and willing myself not to blush. “If…if that’s all right –”

He chuckles softly. “It’s _more_ than all right, Katniss,” he assures me, and goes to retrieve his skis from the cupboard in the workshop.

Once we’re outside, I crouch before he can stop me to fasten the straps over his boots. _A worker who loves her master will go out of her way to please him, anticipating duties he hasn’t assigned and happily performing them._ Peeta laughs at my eagerness but it’s a gentle sound, with no mocking behind it. “Little songbird,” he says again, softly this time, and his fingers brush the crest of my cardinal-cap as I bend over his feet.

 _You needn’t worry,_ I answer silently, snugging the strap across his prosthetic foot with an extra measure of care. _This bird – this kit, this cougar-cub – is tame: tamed by your soft words and careful movements, by your quiet patience and gifts of food. She will neither bite your hand nor flee from it._

I rock back onto my heels to stand and Peeta offers a hand to help me up. “Are you riding in front or back today?” he asks with a grin.

“Both,” I answer without hesitation and step onto the runners behind him, cinching my arms about his waist and burying my face in his bearskin. _Mine_ , I think, squeezing him tightly, _even if only for these few stolen moments,_ and I tilt my chin to press a small, swift kiss to his spine. He’s far too thickly bundled to feel it, of course, and even if he could, he’d hardly believe what his senses were telling him.

His arms cover mine on his ribs, like a hug in return, and he raises my right hand to his face for a split second. I feel a fleeting pressure against the leather over my knuckles – _a kiss,_ I realize with a wild, eager tingle in my belly – then he takes the poles in hand and we glide into the woods: a snow maiden on the back of her beloved white bear, her slender arms serving as both saddle and reins.

Peeta doesn’t speak or stop or even slow down till we’ve gone so deep into the woods that the house is out of sight, and I don’t mind it a bit. This may all be Peeta’s property, but I’m his huntress and that makes the woods my kingdom, after a fashion. Everything I’ve given – and intend to give – this sweet boy has come from its trees and burrows and snowy paths, and there’s something almost magical about sharing this journey with him. _Everything in this place belongs to you,_ I tell him silently, resting my cheek against his back. _Anything you see – and everything you don’t – is yours for the asking._

He slows us to a stop in a little clearing drifted with snow so white and downy that all I can think of is tumbling us sideways into its softness and climbing atop him to cover his face with kisses. _This snow would make a fine nest,_ I think, _and the pines above a bower, where a snow maiden and her bear-prince could laugh and sigh and embrace_. _Where they might pass the winter in each other’s arms, bundled in bearskin against the cold and warming each other’s blood with flurries of kisses._

“So,” Peeta says, startling me out of this fairytale dream, “I expect you have questions.”

His voice is hushed; just louder than a whisper, despite our distance from the house, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is that I’m supposed to have questions about.

“About Pollux and Lavinia, little redcap,” he prompts gently, reaching back to ruffle the crest of my stocking cap with a playful hand. “Though if you’d rather take a nap back there,” he teases, “that’s okay too.”

 _Yes,_ I think greedily. _I want to curl against your broad back and sleep just like this – every day after lunch and every night after supper and every morning, before and after breakfast._

But of course, I tell him none of this.

“Did you sing the bridal songs?” I ask quietly. A strange question, perhaps, but the image of him doing so – singing tender old folk songs in his plain, pleasant voice to the newlyweds kneeling before the stable stove – has haunted me ever since my conversation with Pollux this morning.

He exhales slowly and it sounds a little like relief. “Of course,” he replies. “I mean, it hardly counts if you don’t. I baked their bridal loaf and warmed the honey and wine – and cooked them a special supper besides.”

I reluctantly loose my hold around his middle and step off the skis. I want more than anything in the world to keep holding him, but it feels wrong to have such a serious conversation when I can’t see his face.

I come around in front of him and step backwards onto the runners, so we’re facing each other. “When?” I ask simply.

“A few weeks before the Victory Tour,” he says. “They came together to ‘talk’ to me; to explain that they were…that they had become lovers. Which came as no surprise,” he remarks with a chuckle. “They were being as discreet as you would imagine, but Pollux was ridiculously happy – beside himself, really – and doing a terrible job of hiding it, and after resisting him for so long, the softness in Lavinia’s manner was as obvious as a declaration.”

I smile at this. In light of what Pollux told me about his feelings for Lavinia, I can well imagine him being euphoric to have them returned at last. And Lavinia might be the strongest woman I’ve ever met, but even fierce, stubborn Granny Ashpet melted for love of a gentle boy.

“They wanted me to know,” Peeta goes on, “to make sure I didn’t mind – and of course, they hoped I would help keep their secret from the Capitol. After what I’d done for them, they didn’t want to betray my trust or take advantage of my hospitality, let alone get me into any kind of trouble. Really, all they wanted was for me to know that they were lovers,” he says, “and, they hoped, be okay with it.

“The marriage was my idea,” he explains. “They wanted so little – just my permission for them to share a bed sometimes – and it seemed so simple. They loved each other deeply, and for people who’ve faced the horrors that they have, the mere act of daring to love another person is a commitment in itself. Surely, I thought, marriage was a natural progression.

“They were anxious but hopeful when I said I would try to get permission for them to marry,” he says, “and when I couldn’t, I suggested the toasting.”

He hesitates for a long moment, his eyes on his boots, and drives the ends of the poles into the snow in a gesture of frustration. “I should have tried harder,” he says, and his voice is barbed with disappointment. “I offered money – _so_ much money – to every official I talked to, but…I should have done _more_ ,” he finishes wearily. “I should have – I _could_ have, I think; could have thought of another way, but…”

I catch his face in my gloved hands and tilt it gently, raising his eyes to mine. This good, kind, _incredible_ boy clearly did everything in his power to enable two slaves to marry by the law, and if the Capitol was determined to forbid it, there’s nothing in the world he could have done to make it happen. “But what?” I soothe, but it’s not really a question. Knowing Peeta, he offered the Justice Building officials everything he possessed, and then some, but there was _nothing_ he could have done to change their minds, so it was hardly a matter of his offers falling short.

“But…I wanted _you_ too much,” he whispers from the cradle of my hands.

My heart skips and stumbles and goes still as a stone in my breast. “What?” I rasp.

“I was already planning – well, _hoping_ – to bring you here after the Victory Tour,” he replies, so softly, but still the words resonate through my palms. “I hadn’t spoken to anyone at the Justice Building about it yet – I wouldn’t presume to do any of that till I had your consent – and I thought my best chance would be after the Victory Tour, when the Capitol was happy with me again. But…I was afraid if I pushed too hard for Pollux and Lavinia to get married, I might lose everything,” he confesses, and his bright eyes are so full of grief that I have to ground my boots on the runners to keep from striding forward and kissing those eyes closed.

“I might lose them their freedom to be here and…a-and the chance of having you here with me,” he says raggedly, and my feet break free of the runners with all the force of shattering ice. I close the space between us in one swift, eager step and lean up to press my face, brow to nose tip, to his.

“You did the right thing,” I say, and wonder how my voice can sound so calm when my heart is hurling itself against my breastbone, desperate to batter its way out to him. “You saved my life, Peeta, and Prim’s and Mom’s, while protecting Pollux and Lavinia – and Rye too, I’m sure,” I add in a rush, realizing for the first time that, like all of us, Peeta will have rescued the pony from a miserable situation somewhere. “And…and all of the birds and–”

“Do you want to know where Rye came from?” he breaks in, a whisper of breath across my lips, and I shake my head fiercely against his because that’s no good; no good at all. If he tells me that Rye was hungry or unwanted or abused by overwork, there is no force in these woods that can prevent me from tilting my head down a fraction of an inch, here and now, and covering his mouth with clumsy, desperate kisses.

“You _saved_ me, Peeta,” I say, pressing my forehead emphatically against his. “You saved _everyone_. My family and yours, Pollux, Lavinia – the Hawthornes even got a New Year’s feast, thanks to you.”

“You had a little something to do with that,” he reminds me wryly, but his voice is more than a little uneven.

“And I would never have shot that deer if you hadn’t brought me to live here with you,” I remind him in turn. “Likelier than not, I’d be dead by now.”

“Don’t say that,” he says sharply, pulling back a little, but the grief in his eyes makes it all too clear that he knows I’m right.

“ _Peeta,_ ” I soothe, drawing him back to me, to press my brow to his once more. I want to kiss him so badly that I can barely breathe – to kiss the sorrow from his eyes – but he doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want _me._

 _I should have tried harder,_ echoes his voice in my mind. _I should have done more, but I wanted you too much._

My breath catches at the recollection. I know perfectly well what he didn’t mean, but I don’t quite understand what he _did_. “Why me?” I ask quietly, the question I should have been asking myself for the past month and one of the first my mother asked when Peeta proposed the bargain to her.

 _I have a high regard for Katniss,_ he told her that night. _I think we would…deal well together. I want her to live with me. I want her company._

_I want her._

“Why did you want me?” I whisper.

Peeta lifts his head, gently easing my hands from his face and curling them inside his palms as he gazes down at me. His mouth is smiling but his eyes have never looked so sad. “You have no idea, do you?” he says. “How strong and beautiful you’ve _always_ been, like a fairytale come to life. The black-braided huntress-moon, making her living from the woods and sustaining her family on scraps.”

I scowl in reply, furious that he would tease me in response to such a simple question, but I can’t find my voice and can’t seem to stop trembling.

“I wanted you more than I can ever say,” he goes on, and my tremors are mirrored in his voice. “To feed you and keep you warm; to give you a beautiful place to live, right at the heart of your woods – and then set you free, to run and hunt and forage to your heart’s content.”

“You make me sound like some kind of wild animal,” I say, intending for the words to sound sarcastic and biting, but they come out vulnerable and frighteningly genuine because, of course, a wild animal is exactly what I am. A kit or cub or hungry bird, tamed by a boy who simply wanted to care for me till I was strong and healthy once more and then set me free in the place I love most in all the world.

“You _are_ ,” he replies solemnly, squeezing my hands. “The wildest, loveliest creature in all of Panem, and I wanted more than anything for you to share my home. To hear your fleet steps on my stairs and see your silver eyes, every now and again, shining with health and happiness across my table. So to have you here like this: sharing all my meals, telling me tales, making me gifts – it’s like a _dream_ , Katniss,” he whispers.

I try to snort at these foolish fairytale words – me, wild and lovely with silver eyes, and my presence here like a dream? – but it’s no good. I love him and I want this, _all_ of this, and a sob comes out instead.

“Please don’t be upset,” he pleads, and his whole demeanor is sorrowful now. “When I made that bargain, I…I wanted to take care of you and…I wanted your company. I hoped you might agree to be my huntress, but I never dreamed you’d be my friend. That we’d ski and skate and have picnics by the stable stove –” He gives a broken little laugh. “I never dreamed you’d help me bake cookies or ask me to share your special New Year’s orange,” he says, “let alone that you’d bring me gifts from the woods.

“I would have given anything just to have you under my roof,” he breathes. “To see you warm and well-fed and safe – and free to come and go as you please.”

“You wanted to tame a bird,” I whisper.

I’d guessed as much, of course, but it’s something else entirely to hear Peeta say it. All at once I’m back in my bird dream, reliving each tender moment in breath-catching detail: burnt bread in gentle hands, white fur and a warm body shielding me from the cold, hearty beakfuls of baked pumpkin, soft breath on my feathers and a strong, steady pulse against my belly. It may have been a dream, but each of those moments – every one save finding Peeta in my bed and nestling in the hollow of his throat, with his hand for a coverlet and his breath for a lullaby – was based on a real-life interaction between us. The burnt bread that saved my life, the bearskin that kept me warm, that first nourishing supper of pumpkin soup, and the glorious woodland bedroom, prepared just for me. 

Peeta carefully releases my hands and raises his to cup my face, as gently as he might cradle a fallen nestling. “A hungry little bird,” he replies with a heartbreaking smile. “I made a nest for her, where she could fill her belly and strengthen her little wings, so she could fly to her woods whenever she liked. And maybe,” he adds softly, stroking my cheek with his thumb, “if I was very, _very_ lucky, I might even hear her sing.”

I can’t bear this, not another touch nor another word. Peeta wants exactly what I’d guessed: a wild creature, tenderly tamed to his company, to fill the quiet hours and share his meals, but every word he’s spoken means so much more – _too much_ – to a girl who’s just realized that she loves him. A girl who wants nothing more than to burrow into that nest _with_ him, to shield him with her wings and feast him on the bounty of her woods. A girl who wants _him_ to fill her belly, not with food but with chicks – his own, bright-eyed and downy – and whose heart is bursting with songs for him.

I can’t let him continue on this track or we’re both done for. In half a heartbeat I’ll be twined around him, toppling us both into the deep, downy snow and kissing him breathless, and then he’ll have no choice: he’ll have to send me away. Back to Twelve, to the home that isn’t my home, and never another shared meal or ski trip or nap in his arms.

“Pollux and Lavinia,” I blurt, desperate to change the subject before I say or do something unforgivable and get myself banished from this fairytale world – and my bear-prince – forever. “Y-You said you should have done more for them,” I say in a rush, “but they don’t seem too upset to have been married in Twelve’s fashion.”

Peeta gives a long, slow sigh and lowers his hands from my face. He seems at once disappointed and relieved by the change in subject, neither of which reaction makes sense in the least. “Not at all,” he replies. “They were overjoyed with every bit of it. Toasting bread over the flames, exchanging promises, the bridal songs and the meal afterward. I bought them special wedding clothes – well, had Marko and Rooba buy them for me, a few days apart, so it wouldn’t look suspicious,” he explains. “And…I read their promises aloud during the ceremony.”

My mouth drops open and Peeta’s cheeks darken to a vibrant rose.

“They…they couldn’t say them themselves, of course,” he reminds me quickly. “And…they wanted to hear them.”

A toasting is about as informal a marriage ceremony as you can get. A couple enters their home, builds a fire together, toasts a bit of bread and feeds it to each other. It’s a simple, unscripted folk ritual. There are trappings, of course: wine, honey, and songs; a meal, a cake, fine clothes and sometimes special gifts, depending on the wealth of the couple and the involvement of their families, but in general, no one officiates at a toasting. Friends and family members are present, more often than not, to sing and cheer and serve the meal afterward, but no one besides the couple speaks or plays any role in the ceremony itself.

Before the Dark Days, marriages were performed by a community elder of sorts, and on very rare occasion, a couple will invite a revered elderly friend or relative to preside at their toasting in a similar ceremonial capacity, joining their hands before the fire or speaking about the symbolism as they toast and share the bread. But to the best of my knowledge, what Peeta did for Pollux and Lavinia – formally reading their vows to each other – hasn’t been done in Twelve in over a hundred years.

“I know it’s a little…unusual,” he says. “But it was what they wanted, and I wasn’t able to give them a proper legal ceremony, so…it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“It was,” I assure him, and I mean it with every fiber of my being. I want to touch his hot cheeks, to soothe away that flush with my fingertips, but I know better than to try. “It’s how weddings used to be, right?” I say. “Maybe how they’re _supposed_ to be.”

To my surprise, this simple remark brings a blinding smile to his flushed face. “You have no idea, Katniss,” he replies. “Tonight, if you want, I’ll tell you about Mellark weddings: how they used to look and what they’re like now. It definitely puts my little vow-reading to shame,” he adds with a chuckle.

I find myself echoing his smile. The last thing in the world I want to think about is Peeta’s wedding, but there’s clearly a story here and, likelier than not, considering his rich Mellark heritage, one of fairytale caliber. And if I know Peeta at all, that story will unfold beside the living room fire, with hot drinks in our hands and warm wool spread across our laps. “I’d like that,” I tell him softly.

Without discussion, I resituate on the skis and we turn for home, with Peeta’s bearskin fastened around both of us from waist to knees and my body resting against his beneath its heavy warmth. My hands cover his on the poles but, once again, he’s doing all of the work, and it feels so wonderfully, impossibly _good_ that I never want this return journey to end. I don’t know if Peeta’s equally reluctant to get back or simply tired this afternoon, but he’s moving us at a much more leisurely pace than he took to get us into the woods, and I don’t mind it a bit.

“So,” he murmurs against my cap, “if there’s anything else you’d like to know, now’s the time to ask. We’ve got a good ten minutes before we’re in range of the bugs again.”

I consider the offer, basking contentedly in the combined warmth of his body and the bearskin as I am, and ask what I’ve been wondering since before breakfast, when he stopped my words with his fingertips and startled me to silence with that exquisite kiss to the tip of my nose. In other circumstances the subject would break my heart, but right now, lying between his bearskin and the muscular contours of his body, I feel strangely impervious to such pain. “Peeta,” I ask, “don’t you…well, want _more_ from your sweetheart?”

“Want _more_?” he echoes in startled disbelief, and the skis hiss to a stop beneath us. “When it comes to my sweetheart, Katniss, I’m as greedy as they come,” he says. “I want to bury my hands in her hair and kiss her breathless and spend whole days in bed with her in my arms. I want…I want to pour my love into her,” he whispers, his lips just brushing my ear, “till she glows with it like a toasting fire.”

I suck in a sharp breath at all of this – the image Peeta’s painted with his lush words, the fleeting touch of his mouth against my ear, the rush of pleasurable goosebumps running the length of my back – but he’s not done yet. “I want her to love me to distraction and whisper my name in her sleep,” he goes on, the words low and soft and ardent against my cheek. “I want us to have children – by the bucketload – and I want to cook her the most wonderful meals and shower her with presents and paint every mood and facet and feature of her.

“I want _everything,_ Katniss,” he finishes quietly, resting his cheek against my temple. “And more besides. I want the moon.”

My breath stills in my lungs and I wonder why I’m trembling so hard beneath the bearskin.

_I want the moon._

I know he doesn’t mean the literal moon or, for that matter, the huntress-moon of my father’s tale. _You want the moon_. It’s something Seam mothers say to their children when they express a desire for something utterly impossible – what Grandpa Asa’s mother said to him when he fell in love with Granny Ashpet. They were both Seam-born and poor, of course, but she was as beautiful as he was plain and well able to provide for herself.

_A beautiful Seam girl that a lot of boys like…_

But Peeta’s a Merchant boy and a Victor besides. Wealthy beyond comprehension and handsome and strong; add to that his kindness and gentle manner and a Seam girl would be crazy to turn him down. Literally insane, with her family desperate for food and warm clothes and fuel for their fires, and all at once I’m infuriated by the fact that Peeta is here with me in the middle of the woods, spilling over with love for his girl while she sits by her parents’ cold hearth in the Seam, indifferent or even oblivious to his feelings.

I turn to glare at him over my shoulder. “Then why don’t you, I don’t know, paint _her_ name on your sleigh and drive to town with food and furs and just _ask_ her to marry you?” I demand.

It’s a harsh thing to say but I suspect he needs to hear it. There may be few people in Twelve who truly know what katniss blossoms look like, but I guarantee that word has spread to Peeta’s girl by now, or will very soon, and Peeta can hardly drive into town to ask a girl to marry him when he has another girl’s namesake emblazoned in vibrant detail all along the polished sides of his sleigh.

That being said: even if he drove to the Seam right this minute – painted katniss blossoms and all – and simply asked his sweetheart to marry him, with no pretty compliments or promises or honeymoons painted in tender words, she still wouldn’t say no. She couldn’t. She might be embarrassed but she wouldn’t refuse, not even if she hated the sight of him. She – and her family – need what he’s offering far too much. I doubt she’d hesitate a half-second before giving her consent.

Peeta shakes his head slowly, his lips curving upward in a sad smile. “The thought crossed my mind, at first,” he admits, “but then she would feel bound to accept me, whether she wanted me or not. And as much as I love her, as badly as I want her with me, I couldn't do it that way – couldn’t _make_ her choose me. It would be like clipping a bird’s wings so it would stay with you,” he explains. “Or putting it in a cage.”

For some reason, Peeta comparing his sweetheart to a bird sets my heart on fire – with jealous flames this time. I know exactly what he means – it’s my father’s lesson about catching and taming all over again – but it’s not supposed to be about her. It’s _me_ that he tamed. _Me_ that he won with soft words and careful movements; with quiet patience and gifts of food.

“Then what do you plan to do?” I ask, but I know the answer already.

Peeta smiles, brightly this time, and I feel it like a wedge, splitting my flaming heart into two aching halves. “The same thing you’ve been doing with that mourning dove in the garden for the past month,” he replies. “Offer her crumbs. Let her decide if she trusts, let alone _likes_ me, and if she really wants to be with me, it’ll be her decision. And if she doesn’t…”

He shrugs against me, a surprisingly nonchalant gesture in light of his passionate declaration of love just moments ago. “I won’t stop feeding her,” he says simply. “I’ll provide for her for the rest of her days, whether she ever loves or likes me or even wants to be my friend.”

“Good,” I tell him, but as votes of confidence go, it’s a feeble, quavering one. “I…that’s pretty much what I figured.”

I settle back against him and we continue on toward home, but the comfort of our position is gone now. Once again I feel like _practice_. The trial run. The fierce, sharp-billed blackbird that Peeta tamed to prepare him for the pretty mourning dove that is his sweetheart. The precious memories of my bird dream feel tainted now, sullied by Peeta’s love for and intentions toward his girl.

 _She’s not a wild creature,_ my heart cries, _whose trust must be won before her heart can be tamed,_ and I know I’m being unfair but I couldn’t care less. I don’t want Peeta to tame this mysterious sweetheart. I’d just as soon he drive into town, throw her over his shoulder and haul her out here, kicking and screaming if need be, to be his bride. I don’t want to watch him woo her, and I can’t bear the thought of watching her fall in love with him.

I’ve witnessed plenty of courtship displays, both among the residents of Twelve and of the woods, but this one, I know, will break my heart beyond mending.

When we reach the stable, I quickly unfasten the bearskin and slip out from beneath its deep, cloying warmth, but I can’t simply storm away from Peeta so I turn and close the fur around him again with deliberate care, then crouch down to unstrap his feet from the runners.

“Katniss, you don’t have to –” he begins, but I shake my head and continue my work. Peeta may be breaking my heart with every breath, but I still love him, and it’s all I can do not to lean up and press a kiss just above the laces of his right boot. The place where, if memory serves, his prosthesis meets the remainder of his leg.

I try to take the skis and poles from him so he doesn’t have to come into the stable to put them away, but he holds onto both firmly and follows me back to the workshop. I try to ignore him as I shuck my outer garments, but he lingers in the doorway, watching me closely. The skis are back in their cupboard, and I can’t think what else he could want from me now. This should be the moment when he asks me what I’d like for supper and then goes back to the house to prepare it, but he’s making no move to do either.

“Katniss,” he says suddenly, “ _please_ let me help with your deerskin. I’ve taken up so much of your time lately; I want to make amends. If you don’t want me touching it – if you think that I’ll mess it up – I can just keep you company while you work. I can sit and talk with you and clean your tools and things,” he explains, and the hope and willingness that lit his eyes when he offered his assistance the first time is back in full force. “I can bring you a hot drink and a snack,” he adds with a tiny, hopeful smile. “I’m sure I could even come up with a story or two to help pass the time.”

At this moment, there’s nothing in the world I want more than Peeta’s presence in the workshop while I tan the deerskin. Never mind the hateful sweetheart he wants so badly to tame: for the rest of the afternoon I can be enveloped in cream-coffee and tales and the sweet warmth of his company…except I _can’t._ This deerskin is meant to be a present for him, and if he hangs around long enough he’s bound to figure that out and spoil the surprise. He might even tell me not to give it to him; that he doesn’t want it, and _that_ I know I can’t bear.

“I _can’t_ ,” I reply, and the words wring my lungs as they leave them. “I-I mean: _you_ can’t. You can’t be out here right now,” I clarify in a small, mournful voice, and I feel crueler at those words than I ever have in my life. “I’m sorry, Peeta.”

I expect him to turn and go – I _want_ him to turn and go – but he just stands and stares at me for a disconcerting span of moments as a strange sunrise of emotions crosses his face. First there’s hurt – the very thing I had expected and dreaded – and then confusion, fading slowly into surprise, delight, joy, pleasure, and finally awe.

“ _Katniss,_ ” he whispers, and his face is lit up like the dawn.

“What?” I reply, a little crossly, because I can’t begin to imagine what part of me telling him to go away made him so incredibly _happy._

“You’re absolutely right,” he says, quite seriously, though a smile dances at the corners of his mouth. “I can’t stay out here a moment longer. There’s something very important in the house that needs my attention.”

The smile bursts out of hiding then, spilling across his face in a foolish, radiant grin.

I don’t understand this at all. Peeta’s teasing me; he must be, saying he’s got important things to work on – supper, no doubt – to take away the sting of me refusing his offer of help for the second time…except that strange awe still lingers in his eyes and he seems genuinely, _overwhelmingly_ happy.

All at once I don’t want him to go. I want him to stay here and tease me and tell me stories while I work. “No, um…it’s okay,” I tell him quickly. “I mean: you can stay. You _should_ stay.”

 _I_ want _you to stay,_ I add silently. _Stay with me. Always._

He looks at me for a long moment and the awe in his eyes briefly battles with longing. I wonder if he’s changing his mind.

I want him to change his mind.

But he only shakes his head. “I…I _have_ to go inside, Katniss,” he says, and the words feel dragged from his lips. “But come and find me as soon as you’re done here and then I’ll stay with you for as long as you want.”

 _Always,_ I think again, wildly this time. _Always always always._

I dart forward to seize him in a hug and he gives me a vigorous squeeze in return; a much tighter, more emphatic embrace than he’s ever given before. “Take all the time you need,” he assures me, a warm puff of breath against my ear, then he leans back a little to look down at me, but he doesn’t let go.

“I can’t do _anything_ if you’re holding onto me,” I remind him, cocking my head like a curious bird. I don’t mind his arms one bit, of course; I just don’t understand why they’re still around me.

He grins again, so broadly that it makes my heart swell and ache and strain at its seams, then he leans in and kisses my cheek: a swift, sound peck, square against the bone, that resonates through my body in a shudder from my shoulders all the way to my thighs. My lips move soundlessly – a feeble, fruitless attempt to ask _What was that_ _all about?_ – and then his big hands are cupping my cheeks and he’s covering my face with happy kisses. Eager, enthusiastic pecks of that sweet, soft mouth over every inch of my forehead, temples, eyes, nose, cheeks, and chin.

He skips my mouth, but my knees are plenty liquid without that.

“Wha…wh-wh-wha…?” I stammer, but even my jaw has gone boneless at this display. I’m sagging against Peeta, melted by his impossible flurry of elated kisses. I can’t begin to imagine where they came from or why, and I’m not entirely sure I survived them. I’d be certain I was dead or simply dreaming, except I can smell the deer hide on its scraping trunk behind me and the skin of my face is tingling with the memory of Peeta’s lips.

I gaze up at him, dazed, to find that sweet mouth sprawled in a smile too wide and foolish to be called anything but a grin, and a ridiculous one at that. It’s the grin of a Merchant boy who’s just stuffed his face with the most delicious cake and doesn’t care about being caught in the act or about the stomachache he’s doomed to suffer an hour later.

“You, Katniss Everdeen,” he says, “are _magnificent._ ”

And with that he presses one final kiss to the tip of my nose, drops his hands from my face, and turns for the door.

My flailing hands have just found purchase on the workbench behind me when Peeta whirls back around in the doorway, his cheeks flushed and his eyes almost fever-bright. “Rye belonged to a Gamemaker’s daughter,” he blurts in a breathless rush. “The richest ones keep ponies and toy chariots and drive them around the City Circle in the ‘off-season.’ I had a good view from my hospital room,” he says, “and I saw this stubborn, shaggy pony and thought he deserved better than a lifetime of toting around a spoiled little girl in a mockery of the Tribute Parade and being shut up in a dark underground stall with nothing but moldy hay and Avoxes for company whenever she got bored of him.

“I already knew where I was going to live when I got back to Twelve,” he goes on, still talking a little too fast, as though afraid I’ll stop him if given a chance. “And I knew I’d need help moving things from place to place. The girl was only too happy to sell her pony to a Victor; she wanted a ‘prettier’ one anyway,” he adds dryly. “A mutt-pony, probably, with a pink mane and silver coat – so they loaded Rye into a boxcar of the train that brought me home and…and that was that,” he concludes breathlessly. “Did you know that ponies roll in the grass, like pups?”

I shake my head slowly – my jaw is still slack and my lips are incapable of forming words – and Peeta grins. “The minute his harness was off, he was on his back in the clover,” he says with an erratic little laugh. “It took a good thirty minutes and six sugar cubes to get him anywhere near the stable – but of course, then he found the carrots and apples and oats and he never wanted to go anyplace else ever again.”

“Okay,” I croak, and with one final smile – a small, abashed one this time – Peeta leaves the workshop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's curious, there are a few deliberate Christ!Peeta nods in this chapter (in particular, Eucharistic imagery), and Katniss's references to crumbs, especially this one:
> 
> The birds of the woods eat the crumbs from his table and grow fat and cheerful upon them. Are you – a willow catkin, spun from starlight and sparrow-song; from winter and wildflowers and will-o'-the-wisps – so very different from those birds?
> 
> are nods to Matthew 15:27 ("...yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table" - ESV) and quite possibly, without our narrator's knowledge, Matthew 10:31 ("...you are worth more than many sparrows" - NIV). :D


	13. Of Braids and Brides: Part Two (January)

_**A Winterlude** _

_A boy with a curling-up mouth and a voice soft as fresh-fallen snow._  
_With those words came the wanting. And all was changed. Irrevocably.  
_ ~East _by Edith Pattou_

Ten minutes later I'm standing beside the workbench with a knife in hand, staring mindlessly at the buck's head, when I hear an amused throaty chuckle from the doorway.

A slate appears in front of my face, held up on one side by a large hand. _Don't you need the saw for that?_ it reads.

"Probably," I reply, but I neither look up to acknowledge Pollux nor make any move toward the buck's head.

Pollux laughs again, heartily this time, and turns me to face him, knife and all. His eyes are at once merry and intrigued, and the words tumble out between my numb lips. "You were right," I tell him miserably. "You were so, _so_ right about me."

He raises his brows but there's no mocking in the expression. _I know,_ he writes, then: _Shouldn't you be happier?_

" _Happier?_ " I echo, a despondent cry straight from my heart, but the rest of me is still limp and dazed and moving in a dream and the word comes out slurred, as though I've taken a generous measure of sleep syrup and haven't quite managed to find my bed.

Pollux guffaws at this and waves a hand around my face before scrawling another note. _Elated, I'd expect,_ it reads, and he wiggles his eyebrows at me meaningfully.

I shake my head furiously at the implication, hoping beyond hope that he didn't witness the whole exchange with Peeta, and give his shoulder a smack for good measure, but it does nothing whatsoever to dampen his delight. " _No_ ," I tell him firmly. "That's nothing at all to be happy about. Peeta has a bird-girl to tame a-and woo and fill with babies. _That_ –" I swirl a hand in front of my darkening face in a cross imitation of his gesture – "was just him being silly."

He grins and writes on the slate again: _Then why can't you stop smiling?_

I whirl back toward the workbench, dropping the knife and bringing both hands to my mouth in horror. There's no window in here for a reflection, but my fingertips read the truth easily enough. My lips are tight at the corners and pushing my cheeks upward in an unmistakable smile, and judging by a faint ache in my facial muscles, I've been holding this expression for quite some time.

Ten minutes, at the very least.

" _Oh no,_ " I groan, which only serves to make Pollux laugh again, even harder this time.

The slate reappears in front of me with yet another message; a long one this time, more carefully scrawled. _If it's any consolation, Lavinia was furious when she realized she loved me_. _Strong women, I suppose?_

I think at once of Granny Ashpet, her lap full of soft ivory doeskins as she sewed and sang of love, and of the moment when the door to her hideaway opened and the plain, scrawny, helpless toymaker that she loved with every fiber of her being looked in and saw her truly, pouring her love for him into every stitch of her wedding gown.

As my father told it, she immediately rose to one knee, nocked an arrow in her bow, and shot it at Grandpa Asa's head. I used to think this was an exaggeration; a detail added later for dramatic purposes, but I'm no longer quite so sure. If Peeta had walked in on me sewing his muffler or filling my father's precious handkerchief with pine needles or carefully whittling down that maple branch to make a cooking spoon, how would I have reacted?

I think of my fury when he caught me at the chopping block, in the midst of cutting pine chips to fill his stout right shoe, and realize it was only partly about spoiling the surprise.

"Something like that," I tell Pollux faintly. I rub at my lips with the back of my hand but the smile refuses to wipe away.

 _Let me do this much,_ he writes and gestures at the buck's head with his slate. _You + Sharp Objects = Not a good idea right now_

"Oh shut up," I grumble, but he has a point. Opening a deer skull requires a certain amount of brawn as well as accuracy, especially if you plan to make use of the antlers, and my nerveless hands are in no condition for making precise cuts, let alone ones that might impact the quality of Peeta's deerskin.

"Fine," I concede in a little huff. "But once I have the brain, you go away. I wouldn't let Peeta help me so I certainly can't let _you_."

 _It's not_ _my_ _present,_ he reminds me with a wink, and I wonder if that should surprise me more, considering I haven't said a word to anyone about giving the deerskin to Peeta.

Then again, Pollux knew I loved Peeta the day we first went into the woods, over a month ago now, and he's since watched me pluck and butcher and tan with an unwavering dedication, and all for that boy. At this point it would be shocking if he _didn't_ expect the deerskin to be a gift for Peeta.

He turns with a chuckle to retrieve the handsaw and I head outside with a pail to collect snow for my slurry. Lake water from the tap would serve just as well, really; half the time that's what I use to make the brain-tan for my rabbit skins, but I want snow from the woods for Peeta's deerskin. The wildest, purest, most magical form of water – and the essence of last night's dream-Katniss. A snow maiden, carved from the very breath of winter by the gentle, patient hands of a baker's son and brought to life by the touch of his mouth.

_That sweet, soft mouth, kissing its way over every inch of my face with happy abandon…_

I smile so hard that my cheeks hurt.

While Pollux opens the skull, I melt my snow over the stable stove – _a toasting fire in its own right,_ I think – and give the precious hide one final rinse in the washtub to remove any stubborn remnants of hair or skin. Then I set to preparing the slurry with all the care and tenderness of a new bride crafting a shirt or a stew or a fine little cake for her husband.

 _He is not mine,_ I remind myself, almost idly, as I work the brain to a mash with a practiced ease, but it has about as much impact as telling someone that there's a winter storm brewing when they're bundled to their chin in furs and sitting beside a cozy fire with a hearty plateful of food and a hot drink to hand – and nowhere else to be for the rest of their days. Peeta is not mine – will _never_ be mine – but that merry blizzard of kisses, not to mention all the touches and embraces and sweet whispers that preceded it, was given to me and no other.

I can't luxuriate in this moment; I know that only too well. It'll only make things worse for me in the end – but I can't help it. After all, discounting Pollux's peck on my cheek to accompany his white ribbon, I've never been kissed before, let alone by the boy I love. The boy I've been aching to touch and hold and kiss – to _cover_ with kisses – took my face in his big warm hands and kissed me senseless.

I suppose I should have expected it. However quiet or carefully concealed, my wants have always been apparent to Peeta, as clear as if I'd shouted them into the silence of the woods at midnight. He's proven himself an expert at filling voids of any kind, especially the ones I've fought hardest to keep from him, and he never does anything by halves. Hunger is rewarded with a feast and cold with the finest, thickest furs, and what is any yearning for love and affection but a different kind of hunger? How else should he answer such a longing – such a lack – than with a glut of kisses, spilling over me like water from a broken eave?

I shake my head, dismissing this line of thought as quickly as it arrived. Peeta may know, long before I do, when I will be hungry and for what sort of food, but love is another matter entirely: a hunger of the whole _being_ , of the heart and eyes and mind as much as the mouth and arms and belly. Love's hunger is fiercer than any simple demand of the body and far less easily satisfied.

No, if Peeta knew that I loved him or that I longed with all my might for the sort of physical intimacy we shared in the woods and in the stable this afternoon, he would be horrified – he might even feel betrayed – and send me away at once. He certainly wouldn't reward my greed with kisses and cuddling. After all, he knows the value of kisses – the rare, breathless magic that kindles and flares and brings about wonders when one's lips press another's – and of course he's saving that for his Seam sweetheart.

But then why did he kiss me?

I kneel before the stable stove like a bride and work the warm brain-slurry into every inch of the soaking deerskin with slow, deep presses of my thumbs. This is the first skin I've submerged entirely – my rabbit pelts need only be tanned on the skin side – and the oily mash feels lush against my skin. The rich brain oils are used to make a hide supple, of course, but one short month of tanning rabbit skins has substantially softened the calluses on my hands, and working the deerskin like this will leave my skin soft and silky to the elbows, at least for a day or two.

My father often remarked that Granny Ashpet's strong hands were soft as suede on tanning days and never more so than when she hid away in the shack by the lake, tanning her bridal doeskins for Grandpa Asa. _Other women turn to fine soaps and creams and perfumed oils to prepare themselves for a lover,_ he laughed. _My mama cut her fingernails as neat as you please and let the deer brains soften her skin as they did the hides._

When Grandpa Asa arrived at the shack and caught Granny Ashpet at her sewing, she was far too angry to allow him within arm's reach, let alone to touch her hands. It wasn't merely the wedding dress he saw that day, nor that she sang of love as she sewed it. Over the year that had passed since she saved him from the cougar, he had given her all manner of little presents to declare his affection: bracelets of braided grasses, fallen bird's nests, wildflower crowns, pretty pebbles from the lakeshore, simple pictures he had painted on broad strips of bark, even hair clasps; the plain ten-penny ones, bought dearly and painstakingly embellished with feathers and sprigs of evergreen and fragrant juniper berries from his foraging rambles.

Each of these gifts was begrudgingly accepted by my grandmother with nary a word of thanks and never seen again – until that moment. Rather than keep his gifts at the Seam house she shared with her aunt and grandmother, where they might occasion comments and teasing, Granny Ashpet took every last present out to the shack in the woods – her hideaway and true home – and decorated the drab space with them; feathering her nest, in a very real way, like a courted bird in an old tale. Most incriminating of all: the red ribbon that Grandpa Asa had given her the preceding New Year's – the one that bought them a shy first kiss – had pride of place, wound around a fresh pine bough and hung over the hearth.

And there was more still that could not be seen at once but might be found by curious eyes: the dowry Granny Ashpet been preparing in secret since the day she shot the cougar and saved Grandpa Asa's life. Five pounds of her very finest acorn meal, thick parcels of dried venison and wild plums, two crocks brimming with comb honey, fat jugs full of maple syrup and honeysuckle cordial and sweet elderberry wine, and enough roasted pine bark, dried apples, and fat katniss tubers to feast the pair of them till New Year's. There was a broad golden deerskin to blanket their marriage bed; two plump flour-sack pillows, packed full with the down of half a season's worth of geese; and dozens of rabbit pelts, both sleek summer ones and thick winter ones, skillfully shaped into caps and cuffs and collars for Grandpa Asa's little sisters.

But even more astonishing than all of this was the small fortune hidden under the hearthstone. Granny Ashpet had sold the pelt of the infamous cougar to the Head Peacekeeper the previous autumn for a sum she could have used to live very comfortably, well into the following spring, but instead she had saved every last coin – and added to them whenever possible – with the intention of buying her sweetheart a week's holiday from the mines after they were married, so they could enjoy a bit of a honeymoon. Then as now, a miner was lucky to afford even a half-day off for his wedding and seven whole days would be an unthinkable luxury – but to Granny Ashpet, it was worth every penny. She could spare her sweetheart a grueling week in the suffocating blackness of the coal mines – and at the same time, have him entirely to herself, wrapped in her arms and tangled in their bedcovers, for seven glorious days.

Grandpa Asa walked into the shack that day and as good as saw Granny Ashpet naked. His strong, fierce, indifferent huntress, gentle and happy in her nest: surrounded by his gifts, singing of love, and sewing a dress for their wedding, with her dowry filling up every hidey-hole. Her feelings could not have been more apparent if she'd shouted _I love you, Asa Everdeen!_ as he opened the door.

Naturally, she dropped her doeskins and shot an arrow at his head – or rather, very precisely _near_ his head, so it whispered past him to land harmlessly outside the shack. Furious as she was, my grandmother would hardly hurt, let alone kill, the boy she loved so much she was bursting with it. _Get out of here!_ she roared, and Grandpa Asa, always patient beyond measure, even when his heart was racing like a rabbit's at the thought of his sweetheart loving him in return, obliged without a word.

Granny Ashpet busied herself for a few minutes after that, striving to calm herself and pretend that the encounter had never taken place, but her hands were trembling too badly to hold her needle, let alone sew a neat stitch in her perfect doeskins, and at last she wrapped up her work and went outside, thinking to retrieve her arrow and head back to town and, soon enough, face Asa Everdeen who, she was sure, would be waiting for her outside the Justice Building in his shabby best, all triumphant grins. But when she opened the door, to her surprise – which she realized, after a moment's thought, should have come as no surprise at all – Grandpa Asa was just paces away from her, sitting cross-legged at the lakeshore and crafting a stick-dolly from the arrow she'd shot at him. He'd carefully removed and set aside the arrowhead, for he knew it was hand-crafted and very precious, and stuck a small, dried-up apple on the top of the shaft for a head, then he'd made a soft rag-body from his pocket handkerchiefs, knotted snugly at the corners and stuffed with pine needles, and even added little twig arms.

It might not have been Grandpa Asa'a finest work, but at that moment his arrow-dolly was the most beautiful thing Granny Ashpet had ever seen. She approached him carefully, like a cougar who has fallen in love with a sparrow and, having realized it truly for the first time, is desperate not to frighten him away with her claws or her great sharp teeth, and settled beside him without a word.

 _I'd like a daughter,_ he said quietly, without looking up, as he fitted two seeds into the withered apple skin of the dolly's face. _A little girl with your eyes._

 _That's unfortunate,_ she replied, quite calmly in her turn. _I meant to give you a Jack first. A sprightly little boy, like the ones you craft from wood and string._ And with more caution and conviction than she had ever used to draw or loose her bowstring, she set a hand on his.

They had kissed once before – their New Year's kiss, courtesy of one precious red ribbon – but never touched, not even a handshake, and Grandpa Asa gasped at the feel of her fingers. It was a wildly unexpected touch – as though a snarling cougar had suddenly bowed her fierce head and laid it in the palms of her prey, seeking his caress – and of course, so long-awaited as to make its occurrence breathtaking and almost unbelievable, but more than that: Granny Ashpet's hand – the strong, callused hand of a huntress who all but lived in the woods – was petal-soft as a Merchant girl's.

 _What magic is this?_ whispered my grandfather, who believed firmly in such things. He laid the dolly in his lap as gently as if it were their own child then turned to take both of Granny Ashpet's hands in his own, to stroke her softened skin with no small measure of wonder. _Where is my huntress?_ he asked. _My wild beauty, all calluses and scrapes and scars?_

 _She is here,_ she assured him, with a blush none but him – and on rare occasion, my father – ever saw. _It's the tanning; the brain oils. The calluses are still there, and they'll be rough again in a few days. 'Tis a fairy spell, merely,_ she confessed, a little downcast by the deception. _If longer-lasting than most._

He brought her hands to his lips and pressed lingering, tender kisses over every inch of those strong, silky palms. _Oh, my cinder-lass,_ he sighed with his ever-present gentle smile. _Should I love you less when you appear before me in finery?_

 _Needless to say,_ my father recounted, decades later, with a saucy grin, _much as he adored those hard-earned calluses, my papa was none too displeased on tanning days, nor the day or two that followed, when his wife's fingers whispered against his skin, as soft as butterfly wings._

He looked at my mother then and his merriment faded to something I didn't quite understand at the time, nor in truth, until this very moment. My father tanned fewer hides than his mother and, more often than not, small, simple pelts, like rabbit, but his wife would have enjoyed the benefits of it nonetheless. A hunter's strong hands, softened by tanning work, moving over her skin in lover's patterns.

Granny Ashpet's love for Grandpa Asa quite literally softened her, and I realize, with very little surprise, that my love for Peeta has done the same to me. I look down at my hands, smooth and silky beneath the warm brain-slurry, and wonder if Peeta would like the feel of them against his skin. If he would enjoy the fleet, eager dance of soft mousekin-fingers over the gold-dusted plain of his chest, or their gentle exploration of the contours of his damaged leg, or the hungry cupping of both palms against his bare back or shoulders or the nape of his neck, my fingertips threading through his curls as I draw him so tight and close and deep –

I look up from my hands with a mortified start, dashing another girl's daydream from my mind. Peeta is not for me, neither as sweetheart nor lover and _certainly_ not as husband, to share my bed and delight in my touch. Kisses or no kisses, this kind of thinking is greedy and foolish and downright unworthy of me.

I work the skin with renewed fervor and firmly redirect my thoughts to the ultimate purpose of brain-tanning: to make an animal hide soft and supple. But I can't quite resist wondering how soft and supple the skin of Peeta's chest might feel beneath this particular hide – and flushing hotly in response.

I know perfectly well what his flurry of kisses _didn't_ mean. They were nothing but an overflow of merry exuberance, just like those two previous occasions when he kissed my feet – and the last time that happened, now I think of it, was after we first went skiing together. Maybe Peeta simply enjoys our ski trips, like I do – though surely not for the same reasons – and this is his strange but exquisite way of showing it. _It's certainly an extra incentive to go skiing again soon,_ I muse with a giddy tugging at both corners of my mouth.

Or maybe he was just happy to finally be able to confide in someone about Pollux and Lavinia's marriage. He's been carrying their secret for over a month now, even keeping it from _me_ , and it must have been an immense relief to finally be able to say something. Those kisses might even have been a thank-you of sorts.

But the very last thing we'd talked about before those kisses was him not being able to stay in the stable with me while I worked. I told him he couldn't stay and he was genuinely disappointed, even hurt – but then somehow, in the span of no more than three heartbeats, he became overwhelmingly _happy_ and downright eager to go back to the house.

I realize all at once, in blushing hindsight, that at least a portion of that tide of enthusiasm was Peeta planning to make something for me, most likely a lavish supper or a special sweet. It's how almost all of our exchanges end, and I can't begin to understand why, but nothing makes him as quite as happy as the prospect of preparing a meal or a bath or some other little present for me.

Except receiving a gift _from_ me.

My breath catches at this thought. Does he know about my plans for the deerskin? Could he have guessed that I'm making him a present when I told him he couldn't stay and help?

The situation was completely different, but the radiant, ridiculous smile on Peeta's face in the stable today was almost an exact reflection of the one he wore on New Year's Eve, when he found me at the chopping block breaking up pine branches for his shoe and I shrieked at him like a mother blue jay at a hapless encroacher passing too near her fledgling. _It's…New Year's surprises!_ I'd sputtered, and without a beat of hesitation his face split in a grin. He knew immediately, thanks to my reaction at being caught in the act, that said surprises were intended for him – and had quite obviously delighted in the thought.

His first words to me on New Year's morning, delivered in the midst of a deliciously deep hug, were thanks for the shoe and stocking I'd filled for him, and over breakfast he blushed with clear pleasure to display my gifts and thanked me for each item in turn, even the thoughtless roasted pine bark, for which his gratitude was somehow, impossibly, genuine.

And I can scarcely bear to recall his response to the rabbit-skin muffler. The tears in his bright eyes, his arms snug and fierce as he rocked me against him, the wet kisses he pressed to my fingers and his face so sweet and close; a tender nuzzle of noses through plush fur and goose down. Peeta has never been less than moved by any present I've given him, and his reactions have intensified as my gifts have grown larger and more elaborate. If he guessed that I was tanning this deerskin as yet another present, happy kisses would have poured out of him.

I ache at simultaneous waves of disappointment, frustration, and an anticipation so keen that it makes my palms prickle. Disappointment that those kisses were in no way given to me, Katniss Everdeen, for my own sake – though, of course, I've known that much all along – and frustration that this realization of Peeta's has spoiled the surprise of my gift, but all of that is overshadowed by anticipation of his reaction when I finally present him with the deerskin. There will almost certainly be kissing, though I can't be sure on which part of me, as he takes me in his arms and nuzzles me like a kit, quite possibly beneath the velvet drape of his new deerskin, beside the living room fire, with warm bare skin beneath my hands –

A sigh – no, a moan; equal parts pleasure and grief – escapes me and I dash a hand across the surface of the slurry with an impatient growl. _Not for me_ – _none_ of this. If I intend this deerskin as a sweetheart's gift, I'd be better off sending it to Prim or Mom for use as a blanket or clothing material. Indulging in these pointless, hopeless daydreams only delays my work now and will increase the heartbreak – and shaming as it is, I can no longer call it anything _but_ heartbreak – later. If I have any sense at all, I'll put Peeta's potential future hugs and kisses at the furthest corner of my mind and focus on making him a fine deerskin blanket, purely for warmth and comfort.

It's harder than I would have thought possible, especially as I try to envision Peeta shivering with cold or illness and am broadsided by images of his Games – of bloody wounds and hunger; piercing loneliness, screams and tears – that make my arms tangibly ache to cradle his strong, warm bulk. If I didn't know I loved him already it would be impossible to deny now, as I rock back on my heels and rub my eyes against my sleeve, my heart keening like a small dying animal.

_Mine. No harm._

I plunge my hands back into the slurry with single-minded determination. My boy, safe and warm and hale and whole, wrapped chin to toes in a sheet of soft deerskin. This is all that I want – all I can allow myself to want – and anything that delays this goal is an unacceptable distraction.

I focus so entirely on working the brain mash into the skin that I nearly miss the quiet knock from the direction of the workshop – from its back door, which faces the woods. Frowning, I wipe the worst of the slurry from my hands with a length of rag and get to my feet. No one ever knocks out here, save for Lavinia waking me on New Year's morning and Peeta coming to my door on New Year's Eve to collect a suitably large stocking to fill with holiday treats and ask what I wanted for a present. Unless Pollux is being especially silly, which seems unlikely today, there's no reason for anyone to be at the back door of the workshop, let alone knocking at it.

I wonder for one wild moment if it could be my night companion, beloved of the woods and dwelling in its shadows, coming boldly to me by daylight. I wonder if he brought a second wintergreen sprig for my hair or perhaps some equally rare and impossible treasure: an armful of golden honeysuckle, perhaps, or a branch of downy silver catkins.

Of a certain he won't linger at the door, my silent, elusive sweetheart, but if I ran to answer it I just might catch a glimpse of him. Of the cheek that laid on my rabbit-skin pillow last night, wet with tears; of the lips that pressed the crown of my head in three precious kisses or the hands that tied a red ribbon around one perfect orange before tucking it snugly into my palm.

A red ribbon that lies at the heart of my right braid at this very moment.

Driving the whole ridiculous notion from my mind while, at the same time, cursing the lack of a window in the shop, I slow my steps to a deliberate pace, take my skinning knife from the workbench, and edge the door open the smallest crack.

As I expected, there is no one standing outside, only a fresh trail of boot-prints…and the chopping block, posed like a little table, with a fairy's feast spread across its surface, over a red handkerchief for a tablecloth. I discard my knife and shoulder the door wide open, approaching the display with the cautious intrigue of a hungry chipmunk.

There's the enormous bowl-sized mug in which Peeta delights to serve me hot drinks, topped with a towering heap of whipped cream and cross-hatched from edge to edge with glimmering threads of what must be cinnamon-honey drizzle, a Katniss-sized loaf of nut-and-seed bread with a dish of soft white goat cheese, several slices of Rooba's finest holiday sausage…and half of a freshly peeled orange.

 _Are you my sweetheart?_ I ask the woods in thunderous silence, but before it can reply my attention is recaptured by the final, centermost piece of the fairy's feast: a tiny round cake, just a little larger than my palm. Its color and heady aroma betray it instantly as a ginger cake, but rather than a drizzle of hot custard it features a glaze – a thin, opaque sugar-shell crowning the cake like a pane of ice and spilling artfully down its sides in frozen drips – and at the center of this sugar canvas is painted, as dainty and intricate as frost-feathers on a windowpane, a bird. A mourning dove, all soft cooing grays and dusty browns and one bright black eye, with a tiny red stocking cap – exactly like the one I've worn for the better part of the day – tied at her downy throat. Above her head, arching to follow the curved edge of the cake, is a kissing bough, woven with so many sweetheart ribbons that the branch is as much red as green, and at her feet is a platter of pinhead-sized cookies: crosshatched circles of peanut butter, golden shortbread squares, and tiny, adorable butter-cookie snowmen.

It's more than I can bear. I'm suffused by a wave of love so strong that I can't draw breath and I double over with a cry. " _I love you,_ " I moan to the little cake, hugging my knees as I rock in the snow, because if I don't let the words past my lips just once my heart will burst and Pollux will find me slumped dead – or, at the very least, insensible and unresponsive – over the brain-slurry tonight.

 _My boy._ Oh, _my boy. My sweet, sweet boy._

I look at the little mourning dove once more, sink to my backside in the snow, and bury my crumpling face in my sleeve, fighting hard against a fresh onslaught of tears. _Friend,_ I soothe silently, rubbing my heart in slow, gentle circles and swallowing as hard as I can to force the sobs back down my throat. _Peeta is your friend and the best one you'll ever have – only see how he cares for you! He offered you a snack and you sent him away, and yet he prepared this beautiful meal and served it to you on the chopping block, spread with a handkerchief like a fairy's feasting table. A 'crumb' it may be, but surely you'd rather have a single crumb of his affection than daily banquets of anyone else's?_

It takes thirty deliberate, shallow breaths to stop the tears and twenty more to regain any semblance of composure. I shift slowly back onto my haunches, dust the snow from my backside, and go inside to scrub my hands and arms to the elbows, then I return to carry Peeta's fairy-feast, chopping block and all, into the workshop. I set the little cake on the bench over a clean sheet of butcher paper then take my thinnest, sharpest knife and edge it carefully, breathlessly, under the glaze-crown, removing the sugar-picture of the mourning dove. A Katniss-dove – my mourning dove and me at the same time – depicted with both an eagle's eye for detail and a sweetheart's clear affection; crowned with a cardinal's bright plumage and encircled by a kissing bough and my favorite holiday treats.

In any other context, from any other boy, this would have been a love letter.

Peeta clearly meant for me to eat the little dove along with the rest of the cake, but I can't and I won't. I'm going to keep it – _treasure_ it – forever, this sugar-portrait of my bird self, and I quickly construct a makeshift envelope of butcher paper to keep her safe till I go back to the house. This little sugar-dove will hold pride of place among the things I love most, though I'm not certain whether I'll tuck her away in my drawer of precious things or keep her on the dresser-top alongside the night-sky box – the moon-nest – and the picture Peeta painted of me and my mourning dove sharing a cookie in the garden.

Once the dove portrait is secure in her paper sleeve, I carry the chopping block out into the stable and settle down with my fairy-feast in front of the stove, where meals are meant to be enjoyed. Where Pollux and Lavinia were married, and where I leaned against Peeta a short while ago and shared bread pudding in our deep nest of bearskin.

I firmly dismiss these thoughts and cut a determined forkful of bird-free cake, only to moan with pleasure and raw, undeniable love the instant it hits my tongue. As I surmised at first sniff, it is indeed a ginger cake; Peeta's very finest, dense and rich and redolent with spices and molasses, but at its heart lie unexpected silky layers of orange curd and cream that literally melt on my tongue and smooth the robust but comforting ginger "bite" in a startlingly pleasant fashion. It's a heady combination of my beloved ginger cake and the spiced golden wedding cake that Peeta served last night – _a Katniss wedding-cake,_ I think in a foolish burst of whimsy and longing – and even with its pretty sugar-crown removed, there are plenty of frosty glaze-drips down the sides of the cake to savor, which taste of costly candied almonds.

No, not candied almonds; something rarer and far more magical: almond _paste._ Marzipan, I think they call it. In very good years the sweet-shop makes miniature figures of it, fruits and flowers and birds, and sometimes they join forces with the bakery to create magical little cakes – nests full of speckled eggs, rose gardens, and such – to sell for sums so high that my brain can barely comprehend them. One year at the Harvest Festival, not long before he died, my father bought my mother a tiny marzipan bird from the sweet-shop's display – a chickadee, so lifelike that Prim and I begged to stroke it with a fingertip – for more money than I'd ever seen in my life. My sister and I were allowed a careful pet and a heady sniff each, but the candy bird was meant to be a special present just for Mom, because she loved almonds so much and Dad could rarely afford to buy them for her.

Mom ate the little bird in mouse-sized nibbles over several days and always with tears in her eyes, but she insisted on giving Dad the tail and Prim and me a tiny wing each. I pressed the nubbin of sugar and fine almond meal against the roof of my mouth till it melted and tears ran down my cheeks, certain I was tasting pure magic.

Pure magic in a candy bird's wing, savored on a single wondrous holiday, and Peeta not only captured that essence in his glaze but paired it with a breathtaking mourning dove portrait and heady hidden layers of orange curd and cream to craft a cake that truly belongs in a fairy tale. He's fed me incredible sweets before, of course; both delicious and lovely to look at, but surely this tiny masterpiece could only have been wrought by magic.

There's a favorite Seam tale about a witch who lived at the heart of a wood in a cottage made of sweets, who lured children into her home with bricks of gingerbread, marzipan shingles, flowerbeds of lollipops and a walk paved with toffee buttons, only to cage these greedy visitors as soon as they crossed her threshold and fatten them up with those longed-for sweets till they were plump as piglets, then she roasted them, like so many geese, for her own dinner. These days that horrifying, albeit fanciful, story serves as an effective cautionary tale to keep very small children from venturing into the woods beyond Twelve; a far prettier prohibition than white-armored Peacekeepers and electrified fences.

The witch in her candy cottage may be nothing more than the product of some ancient storyteller's vivid imagination, but the cake in my hands would be a perfect brick in such a house – and the very sweet to lure a hungry Katniss into a witch's trap. I chuckle at the thought, recalling my first breakfast in Peeta's house, when he urged me to eat as much as I wanted and I accused him of planning to fatten me up and eat me himself in a month's time.

My brain full of magic and witches, I remember Peeta's offer of a tale to help pass the time as I work and wonder if he means to make good on that as well. Of a certain there will be a story of some kind over or after supper tonight, as he also promised to tell me about Mellark wedding traditions, but if he doesn't supply an old tale of his own I'll tell him about Grandpa Asa finding Granny Ashpet at the shack, surrounded by her handcrafted dowry and sewing her wedding dress. It's the closest I dare come to admitting what lies behind my own gift of a deerskin, and with any luck the detail about the brain-tan softening my grandmother's strong hands will make Peeta reach out in curiosity to feel _my_ hands.

I reluctantly set aside the fairytale cake for the bowl-sized mug, in dire need of a drink to balance the decadent sweetness, and moan deep in my throat at one shy sip of Peeta's latest creation. It's cream-coffee, of course, as I should have expected, but this cup has been made uniquely – _staggeringly_ – rich with _pumpkin_ : real pumpkin flesh, pureed finely and whisked into the coffee and cream along with measures of brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and even a drop or two of vanilla extract, with a garnish of whipped cream and cinnamon-honey threads to thoroughly finish me off.

I raise the mug to my mouth once more and forget Peeta's fairytale cake altogether as I set to the drink with greedy abandon. As I savor gulp after buttery gulp, spilling over my tongue to melt its way down my throat and settle, warm and spiced and pleasantly heavy, in my belly I wonder, amidst fiery blushes, whether making love with Peeta could be half as exquisite as drinking his pumpkin cream-coffee. Whether his mouth could taste half as heady as this rich brew or the warmth of his touch feel half as blissful as it moved down my body –

I quickly set down the half-empty mug, having gone crimson to my collarbones, and cut a thick slice of safe, steady nut-and-seed bread. Love and magic and fairy tales – to say nothing of these lurid thoughts about kind and gentle Peeta – have no place in this workshop, let alone in the generous little meal he so sweetly provided to break up the tedium of brain-tanning and carry me through the afternoon. This fairy-feast, however delicious or evocative or beautifully crafted, is _food_ , intended to fill my belly and perhaps make me smile for a moment or two, but nothing more.

But that doesn't stop me tracing each section of the precious half-orange with a fingertip, like the contours of a beloved face, and sighing a little as I carefully break each sunny half-moon between my teeth and taste, over and over again, the essence of a New Year's afternoon in Peeta's arms, snug in warm wool and firelight. Or wondering – impossible and utterly stupid though such thoughts might be – whether he's doing the same thing in the house right now: tenderly eating the other half of this orange and feeling the drowsy weight of me in his arms, half asleep against one strong shoulder.

Reluctant though I am to see the last of this wondrous little feast, I eat as quickly as I can manage, well aware that I still need to thoroughly wring the brain-saturated skin and tie it into Pollux's frame before going in for the night. I carry the cake plate outside and dust the last precious crumbs over the garden for his birds, and upon my return to the stable my gaze falls on the handkerchief-tablecloth – such a whimsical, needless inclusion – and I can't resist folding it in half, triangular-wise, and tying it around my head.

 _Little redcap,_ Peeta called me in the woods today as he ruffled the cardinal-crest of my stocking cap, then he went back to the house and made me a cake garnished with a mourning dove in a little red cap. My mourning dove and me at the same time.

I probably look as elegant as a Seamwife, laboring over this increasingly rank tubful of oily brain-slurry and deerskin with a kerchief snugged about my braids, but I wear the little square of cloth like a crown of pure gold. There's something about red handkerchiefs in my relationship with Peeta; something powerful and profoundly significant, though I can't quite put my finger on it. I gave him my father's handkerchief as a New Year's present, wrapped round a bundle of sweet pine needles that I gathered in the woods, and now he's given me this one, spread with the most magical and delicious foods from his kitchen.

At least, I _hope_ the handkerchief was intended as a gift, or else I should be filling it with something to give him when I return it.

I consider what Peeta's handkerchief is currently filled with and rub my cheek fiercely against my sleeve to banish the rising blush. Katniss Everdeen is no one's idea of a gift, let alone Peeta Mellark's, even crowned with a red kerchief and presented the day after New Year's; like a secret present, saved till the very last.

 _The day after New Year's,_ I think, and look at the braid dangling over my left shoulder, with Peeta's red ribbon plaited at its heart. A handkerchief might be a far cry from a Merchant sweetheart's token but it would more than suffice in the Seam, where the smallest scrap of red cloth is fit to be called a sweetheart ribbon, and it was preceded by a positive flurry of kisses from the giver. It may be a little late for a New Year's exchange – _a secret present,_ I think wryly, _saved till the very last_ – but I'll wear it as such, just like Peeta's red ribbon, and if he wants it back – an unlikely prospect, but one he would convey in the kindest manner imaginable – I'll return it to him wrapped around a little present of some kind. A true sweetheart gift.

This seems an entirely practical plan at the outset, but my mind keeps returning to the fairy-cake with its painted sugar-dove and the wave of love that literally knocked me to my knees and I realize, with a fevered sort of resolve, that I need to give Peeta some sort of present _now,_ straightaway, when I go back to the house. Not out of any kind of debt nor in return for the beautiful little meal he brought me, like a fairy gift from the woods, but because I love him. I can't explain it any other way. It's a need, as fierce as hunger or thirst or shelter from the cold, and the only time I've felt anything minutely like it was when I saw something in a shop and desperately wanted to give it to Prim or, years ago, my father. They didn't need the item – a length of pretty calico, a colorful sweet, a fragrant bar of fine soap – by any means: the need was my own; my _love,_ manifesting as an urge to secure something wonderful and unexpected and present it to them as a gift. A token of that love.

Except there's nothing left to give Peeta. I scoured the woods just to fill a stocking for him, and I used up every scrap of rabbit fur and goose down making his muffler and my companion's pillow. His deerskin won't be done for several days, and I don't have time to hunt for something else and make a present of its meat, feathers, or fur. If it were even a few weeks later I could look for shed antlers, but –

I stand with a start, my hands dripping, and wipe them mindlessly as I run back to the workshop.

My buck's antlers sit toward the back of the bench where Pollux left them after cutting the skull open for me. I haven't given them too much thought thus far, assuming I'd ask Hazelle for advice in another letter, but there isn't time for that now.

I pick up the antlers and turn them between my hands, running my fingers over the contours from base to point. The hard, cool curves feel like branches of living stone, or once-living stone: ridged in places, worn smooth in others and still pulsing with the life-force of a vibrant young buck.

There had been neither time nor opportunity to contemplate the antlers on the buck Gale and I shot together almost three years ago; the buck that enabled me to buy Lady for Prim's tenth birthday. Despite my father's captivating tales of antler-craft, that deer had meant much-needed money and fresh meat for our families, nothing more. Not a source of cloth and tools and certainly not sweetheart's gifts.

I wonder if I had known I loved Peeta then, if I would have saved some special portion of that deer for him. Tanning the skin would have been beyond my abilities at the time, but perhaps I would have kept back a slab of choice ribs for his family's table and found some way to present it instead of the squirrels his father always traded for.

I wonder for the first time, with a sharply caught breath, if I _did_ love Peeta then. If the grief that poured out of me during his Games had been the outcry of a breaking heart, rendered powerless to prevent her beloved's pain. If I agreed to his bargain not simply to save my family but because my heart desperately wanted to live in the glow of his. If the kiss I clumsily pressed to his cheek after the Reaping – the kiss that sent me sprinting back to the woods to burrow among the roots of an old tree and cry myself sick – had nothing to do with debt or gratitude and everything to do with love and loss.

I wonder if I've loved him since that moment under the apple tree when a boy with a bruised cheek threw burnt bread and life to a dying girl. A girl who grew and thrived because of that boy and that bread, who wished for five years that she could have soothed his cruel bruise with a kiss.

Was that why I kissed him after the Reaping? Had I been carrying that clumsy kiss inside of me all that while? Had Peeta brought life to my heart as well as my body that hopeless day in the rain?

Have I ever _not_ loved him?

I shake away these troubling thoughts with a shiver that reaches to my bones. My love for Peeta is fresh and fragile as a hatchling, I'm sure of it; kindled by his compassion and coaxed into its present brave blaze by the tenderness he shows me at every moment. It's foolish and futile to wonder whether I might have loved him before coming here, let alone when that love might first have flickered into existence. I am a wild creature, devoted to the boy who tamed me with warmth and food and gentle touches, and I accordingly express that love with woodland gifts.

Like a courting bird in an old tale, bringing her sweetheart all manner of odd little presents to feather his nest.

It's both soothing and silly to think of it that way, but it makes slightly more sense of my idea to present Peeta with the antlers of a dead deer, skull patch and all. I don't know what he'll do with them, if anything at all, but it's imperative that I do it tonight, as soon as I get back to the house. My heart is thumping insistently against my ribs, fussing like an impatient child for the exchange to occur, and I almost can't breathe from anticipation: not for his reaction so much as the moment of presenting the gift to him. I'm not sure I'll be able to think straight, let alone stand still, until these antlers are in his hands.

Pollux made neat work of opening the skull for me, and the cap of bone on which the antlers are still anchored is easy enough to clean up. If Peeta wants to make something out of the antlers – or wants me to make something for him – we'll need the saw again, but there isn't time for that now. As it is, the antlers on their skull-crown make a trophy of sorts, much like they did in ancient days when a buck's rack served as a proud hunter's prize. I shot this buck for Peeta and the prize, however meager, should be his, to display or make practical use of as he pleases.

I can barely make myself set the antlers down to finish my tanning work for the day and wouldn't if I didn't need both hands – as well as a sturdy tree limb and a shovel handle, its blade removed to create a makeshift pole – to wring out the skin. I tuck the antlers into my foraging bag between layers of fresh butcher paper and wear it slung across my back as I work, so I can feel the heft and bounce of Peeta's prize against my hip. My shoulders whimper and groan as I roll and twist the priceless hide into a tight golden dough-like knot, over and over again, but still I shake my head at Pollux's repeated offers of help.

 _My gift,_ I think as a bead of sweat trickles down my brow in defiance of the cold woods around me. _My boy._

Pollux guffaws and I realize I said those last words aloud. _Wasn't planning to steal him from you,_ he writes with a wink. _And I guarantee he'd be more upset if you hurt yourself than if you just accepted a little help._

I look up from the slate with a frosty huff of breath and remember that I still have to tie the skin into its frame – _dozens_ of cords threaded through tiny pinholes – and stretch it as thoroughly as possible before I can even _think_ about going in for the night.

Before I can even think about putting those antlers in Peeta's hands.

My shoulder muscles, fully aware that I've been ignoring their protests of soreness all this while, give a tremor warning of exhaustion. Pollux helped me hang the brain-saturated skin over the bough and I'm fairly certain I'll collapse beneath its heft if I have to take it down myself, let alone try to tie it into the frame singlehanded. "I dislike you intensely," I inform him, scowling over the bar of my makeshift pole.

Grinning with unabashed delight, he bends to press a quick impish kiss between my narrowed brows and takes advantage of my surprise to slip the pole from my grip. I glower up at him, expecting a cheeky remark on his slate to accompany this move, and then I realize he's effectively silenced himself by taking the pole in both hands.

I realize of a sudden that I've never really thought of Pollux as silent because he always has so much to "say," via his slate or hand gestures. Compared to me this playful bearded man is downright chatty, but by doing something as simple as holding a tool with both hands, he's rendered himself truly mute.

This doesn't seem to bother him one bit, if his lingering grin is any gauge, but I can't help but hurt for his sake. "There are times when I desperately wish you could speak too," I whisper.

His grin softens but in an understanding fashion, not a sad one, and he mouths a couple of words – _Only sometimes?_ I think – but for the first time ever they're accompanied by sounds. The sort of guttural, heartbreaking animal sounds a person makes after a stroke, and I would burst into tears if Pollux wasn't still looking so defiantly, foolishly happy.

I reach over the pole to take his bearded face in my hands. "I love you," I tell him – the first I've said the words to any person outside of my family – and Pollux's face brightens with a blush of embarrassment and pleasure. Without warning he scrambles to shove the pole back into my hands and then pulls out his slate again, writing frantically with the nubbin of chalk for more than a minute before presenting the message with a triumphant grin:

_Love you too, silly girl, and have since the moment I met you, but I'm not the one you're supposed to be saying such things to._

_Also, I'm a happily married man. But it was a good practice run._

I can't decide whether to smack, throttle, or hug this utter fool but ultimately press the pole into his free hand and move alongside him to wrap my arms around his waist in an emphatic embrace. "Stupid boy," I say, the words mashed against the thick sleeve of his parka. "I take it back. I don't love you at all, I never want you to speak again, and I'm sure the rest of the world is grateful that you can't."

I don't realize how cruel my teasing words must sound until they're out and hanging between us, but Pollux laughs heartily in agreement and bends to rest his head on mine. He makes more throaty sounds, softer and painstakingly articulate in the crude way that he can manage. My best guess is _Wife would agree,_ and I reply accordingly.

"I can't imagine how your courtship would have played out if you _could_ speak," I tease, leaning up to set my chin on his shoulder. "She probably only married you because it's possible to completely shut you up."

Pollux laughs; a short, merry, almost clear _Ha!_ and he fumbles to give me back the pole so he can retrieve his slate once more. _How do you think I got her to kiss me in the first place?_ he writes. _Or hold my hands?_

I shake my head, unsurprised, and blush a little, considering for the first time what coupling must be like for this pair who can only grunt and moan and sigh their love. From the little I witnessed between my parents, intimacy doesn't require much in the way of words – grunts and moans and sighs seem to be the language of lovemaking – but Pollux is so passionate, even desperate, about communicating in words. I try to envision him in bed with Lavinia, tangled in the throes of pleasure, and suddenly pulling away from her to retrieve his notebook from the nightstand and scribble something fiercely sensual, the likes of which I can't begin to imagine. I can't quite decide whether or not to giggle through my escalating blush at this image.

I wonder, not for the first time, what sort of lover Peeta would be. Whether my golden-tongued boy would lie over his wife and murmur beautiful words to her through the darkness, like my father, or whether, enthralled by the act, he would resort to ardent grunts and moans and sighs as his hands and mouth whisper his love against her skin.

I try to imagine which I would like better and blush so fiercely that my face burns.

Pollux's offer of assistance proves invaluable. He's strong enough to give the skin the tight powerful twists needed to wring out the last stubborn drops of snowmelt, and he holds the hide with ease as I thread the uppermost cords of the frame into the holes he punched along the edges – in its way, another gift to speed and streamline the processing of Peeta's precious blanket.

We stretch the skin carefully and thoroughly as we secure it in the frame. This is a vital step in loosening the fibers – in making the skin into soft, pliable fabric rather than stiff rawhide – and there are hours more to come. Hours of scraping and stretching and smoking, but that much will keep till tomorrow. I've labored beyond my reserves of strength and patience and can barely be bothered to wash my hands before turning toward the house.

 _Brain-softened hands = good,_ Pollux writes on his slate as he stands over me at his sink, watching like a stern parent as I scrub impatiently at my nail beds. _Brain-smelling hands = not so good. Not if you mean to touch YOUR BOY at any point this evening._

I scowl and bump him with my hip but obligingly lather my nails a second time. Peeta won't be seeking my touch, of course, but it would be shattering if I reached out to him and he recoiled from the stench of brain mash on my skin.

Never mind how he held me this morning, my hands filthy from hide-scraping. That exquisite, impossible embrace that led me to realize the unthinkable.

I give my hands a hasty wipe and throw the towel at a grinning Pollux. "Can't wait any longer," I tell him and am surprised to hear the words come out breathless. "I've got a present to give and supper to share!"

I turn for the door, about to bolt like a doe on the fringe of a still and golden meadow when Pollux's hand closes over my shoulder, holding me in place. Grumbling with impatience, I look up to find him suddenly somber and holding out his slate with a message that is neither teasing nor playful.

_Are you going to tell him?_

An unlikely question from the man who's been all but hurling me at Peeta from our first meeting in the snow, but surely the answer is obvious. I shake my head. "Of course not," I reply, and wonder why Pollux looses a sigh of what looks like relief.

"He doesn't love me and he never will," I explain, pretending that the words don't hurt to finally say aloud. "I know that. But that doesn't mean I can't love him with all my might until the day I die."

Pollux gasps softly – at the fierceness of this declaration, I imagine – but I'm done with conversation, and with delays that keep me from my boy. I duck out from under his hand to bound down the stairs and out of the stable, Peeta's gift bouncing against my hip all the way.

I sprint up the snow-path, oblivious to the cold, and burst into the house. Without pausing to stamp the snow from my boots I run to the kitchen, intent on surprising Peeta at the stove with a hug from behind, but there's no Peeta in sight, nor pots on the stove. No food on the counter, no dishes in the sink, and only the light nearest the icebox has been left on.

Clearly, he's set the table for us already and is waiting in the dining room, like yesterday at breakfast time.

I leave the kitchen as swiftly as I arrived and run to the dining room, my lips already curling upward in anticipation of Peeta, radiant by firelight and smiling at me across his latest feast – but the room is dark and empty. Not a single candle lit on the table, bare even of bread, and the hearth is cold as a stone.

My smile flickers, but only for a moment. Another day this absence of Peeta and food would make me fear for my boy, but there's a conviction in my newly discovered love, and in the words he spoke to me in the stable this afternoon.

 _Come and find me as soon as you're done,_ he said, _and then I'll stay with you for as long as you want._

_Come and find me, little redcap._

I run to the living room, where we so often and so intimately share meals, to find the low table draped with dishtowels – towels that clearly, even playfully, conceal supper dishes beneath. Peeta prepared our meal as usual but is still occupied with his paints or a shower, perhaps even a nap, and so he covered the food for warmth – or perhaps to tease a curious, hungry Katniss.

I bound up the stairs, my heart pounding against my breastbone, and hear Granny Ashpet's voice in my mind; her voice from my dreams, at once haunting and comforting and every bit as beautiful as my father's:

_I will rise now, and go about the city_  
_In the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek  
_ _Him whom my soul loveth…_

An ancient call beginning an ancient love song; perhaps the first ever written.

My father talked of the soul sometimes – _the part of you that endures when everything else is gone,_ he explained.

 _You mean a memory?_ I puzzled, for surely all that remains when you die are the memories of those who loved you while you lived.

 _No, catkin,_ he said gently, and in that moment his eyes were silver as starlight. _Something far greater than memory. Your soul is the deepest, truest part of you, which does not and cannot die. It endures longer than any memory. Longer than any lifetime, longer than rock and river and the earth beneath our feet. Longer even than time itself._

I stand at the top of the stairs, my breath coming shallow and short, and not from exertion. _I will rise,_ I think, rubbing my racing heart with an impatient hand, as though soothing an agitated beast. _I will seek him whom my soul loveth._

 _The part of me that will endure forever loves Peeta,_ I muse wildly, as in a fever-dream. _My love for Peeta will endure forever._

_Come and find me, little redcap._

I gaze down the hallway, at the riddle of doors on either side. "Where _are_ you?" I cry, not because I can't look but because I can't bear to wait another moment, and it's a jubilant sound. The cry of a lover whose beloved has momentarily eluded her; in a woodland game of hide-and-seek, perhaps, and is about to merrily emerge to cover her eyes with his hands, earning an indignant squeal, or sweep her up in his arms and cover her laughing mouth with equally joyous kisses.

There's a muffled exclamation from the bathroom and the door swings open to reveal Peeta, sweater sleeves pushed to his elbows and little clouds of paint in soft shades of gray and brown and gold – _dove shades,_ I wonder madly, _or doe's?_ – smudging his forearms. His cheeks are flushed, his curls fat and frizzled, and his eyes are wide, even frantic, with concern.

He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.

"Katniss!" he cries, his strong hands reaching out to comfort or protect as he strides toward me. "What happened? Are you all–?"

But that's all the further he gets because I close the space between us in a breathless rush and throw my arms around his waist, so tightly that I make him gasp. My face meets the warm curve of his neck and I burrow eagerly into that beloved nestling-place as I hug him with all my might, breathing his sweet honey-musk and exhaling my bliss in a sound halfway between a contented coo and a greedy moan.

_My boy._

_Mine._

_Always always always._

_I love you,_ my heart tells his, half a whimper and half a sigh; a sweetheart's longing whisper across the impenetrable fences of our ribs. _Oh, how I love you._

Peeta tensed in my arms as I had expected but only for a heartbeat or two, and now he softens into the embrace, both arms curled around me and one hand cradling my head, tucking me snugly into the hollow of his throat. He gives a quiet moan, a hum against my face and a whisper of breath against my kerchief, making the fine hairs on my back prickle and sparking an ache deep and low in my belly.

"Little redcap," he whispers, and his cupped hand opens as his fingers caress the back of my head, the tail of my kerchief and the sleek ropes of my braids beneath, even dipping between them to stroke the downy tender skin of my nape.

It's my turn to moan.

"My little redcap," he says, and it's a little stronger this time, as though the first was a feeble attempt to get the words out. "Katniss, sweethear – are…are you okay?"

I nod against his neck, taking advantage of the movement to nuzzle him a little; a butting, affectionate rub of brow and nose bridge along his throat. _My boy. My boy my boy my boy._ I should pull away or even just lean back a bit to give him a proper reply but our hugs are precious things; stolen gifts on borrowed time, and I'm in no hurry to end this one.

"I brought you a present," I tell him, the words a squashed and happy jumble of syllables against his skin. "I couldn't wait any longer."

To punctuate this I _do_ lean away from him, but just enough to reach the foraging bag at my hip. "A present," I say again and feel my cheeks flush as I push back the butcher paper, hands trembling with eagerness, and lift out the antlers on their skull-crown. "For you," I tell him, holding them out in a rush of love and pride.

Peeta's mouth falls open and his eyes go wide in a mixture of shock and incomprehension. Nothing like his euphoric burst of happiness at the prospect of a deerskin; that fit of foolish joy that led to a shower of giddy kisses all over my face, so I try again. "It's the antlers from our New Year's buck," I explain, my voice rising a little in a hopeful chirp. "I want you to have them."

"But…but they're _yours_ ," he says at last, and his voice is hoarse. "Your...your prize, Katniss."

" _Your_ prize," I correct him and wonder how I can breathe for the tide of love flooding my heart. "I brought that buck home for you."

 _Like everything I find in the woods,_ I add silently. _Every rabbit and turkey and downy fat goose is yours, from top to tail. Fur and feathers, rich dark meat and strong bones filled with nourishing marrow. The buck just happened to be my first gift to come with a crown._

I think of the dream I had after that morning's hunt – of lying between thick white fur and the bare skin of my golden mate while his twin fawns moved in my belly – and I raise the antlers above Peeta's head, tipping them forward to crown his honey-curls. The low, narrow rack encircles his head as though it was made for that very purpose, and I wonder madly if I should have enlisted Pollux to cut away all but an anchoring patch of skull so I could present the antlers as a crown.

A crown of once-living stone, still pulsing with the life-force of a vibrant young buck.

 _My beloved is like a young stag,_ I think dizzily, Granny Ashpet's ancient love song spilling through my mind like a draft of hot spiced wine as I balance the antler-crown on my sweetheart's curly head. _Radiant and ruddy. His head is purest gold. His mouth is sweetness itself._

"Katniss," says that sweet mouth, lips faltering slightly as they shape my name. His hands leave my waist and reach up to lift off the heavy antler-crown, guiding it down between us. "You should keep them," he says, pressing the stony contours into my hands, but it's a weak sort of protest and he doesn't let go. "Make something for yourself."

"I was going to make them into something for _you_ ," I admit. "Tools of some kind, maybe, but I've never carved antler and there wasn't time anyway. I wanted –" _needed_ , I correct silently – _"_ you to have them right away."

"Why?" he wonders, so softly, tipping his head a little. He no longer looks quite so shocked or confused, simply curious. "You promised me last night: no more gifts, not for a good month," he reminds me, and there's both teasing and a gentle admonition in his words. "Why would you give me something so precious, today of all days?"

 _Because I love you,_ my heart answers without hesitation; surely the only reply that is needed, and for a split second I panic that I said the words aloud. But no: Peeta is still looking at me, curious and almost smiling, as though he might puzzle out my motivation for breaking last night's promise if he just watches me long enough.

I consider every possible explanation, trying in vain to find one where love plays no part. Peeta gave me a present today, of course – the fairy feast with its precious bird cake and a red kerchief-cap to boot – but as he made no promises about not giving _me_ more gifts anytime soon, I can hardly chide him in turn and call it even. And my gift is anything _but_ a repayment or exchange for his. Crude as they may be, the antlers are a lover's token, pure and simple. The gift of a wild girl for her beloved boy, like a colorful scrap of cloth, a bright berry or a shiny pebble, tucked like a jewel into a courting bower by an ardent and affectionate sweetheart, as desperate to demonstrate her love as to win his own.

_Oh, how I love you._

My heart, filled to bursting with these words, gives a valiant upward shove and my mouth opens in a croaked little "I–" but just as quickly my throat closes because I can't tell him that; can't _ever_ tell him that. "Peeta," I try instead, and this word my tongue loves, like frothed cream and clover honey and hot fresh bread soaked with butter and goat cheese, and to it neither my heart nor my throat have any objection. So I say it again, like a sigh this time: " _Peeta..._ "

His expression softens and he relinquishes the antlers into my hold, but only to pull me close. Raising both hands to my nape, he gently draws my face to his, to rest his mouth against my forehead. The antlers are caught between us, hard and pointed against my ribs – and Peeta's too, no doubt – but he's not pulling away, nor holding me any less tightly, and I'd endure much worse to bask in his touch; in the soft, steady puffs of breath on my skin and the radiant heat of his body.

"Little redcap," he says for a third time, his fingers caressing my scalp through the kerchief, and there's a sigh in his voice now too. Comfort, contentment; almost a relishing of the words as he kisses them into my brow. "I'm sorry for questioning you," he murmurs. "The antlers are magnificent, and if you truly want me to have them, I'd be honored to accept. I just…I don't understand," he whispers. "Why do you give me so _much_?"

 _You give me so much more,_ I think, but that's not the reason at all. "Because I want to," I tell him simply, the answer no less true for being a partial one. "Because…because I care about you, a-and giving you things makes me happy."

So _happy,_ I think, my mind full of rabbit skins and goose down, of pine bark and honey buttons and handkerchiefs.

He leans back just enough to meet my eyes, his mouth easing away from my forehead like the end of a lingering kiss and curling upward in a crooked little smile. "You too?" he says.

My heart glows. I know that Peeta's gifts aren't prompted by love the way mine are, but the thought that he takes pleasure in the giving is more than enough for me. "You made me a bird," I whisper, and I can't keep the smile from my face.

I'm not sure whether I'm acknowledging that he painted a bird for me or that he made me _into_ that bird, for both are true and equally wondrous, but Peeta beams down at me regardless. "I hoped you would like her," he says, almost shyly, his cheeks pinking. "The mourning dove and her special ginger cake."

"I loved it," I assure him. "Every bite," I add, leaning my cheek against his to hide my shame, for surely he would be mortified, perhaps even hurt, to learn that I saved his pretty sugar portrait as a keepsake rather than eating it as he'd clearly intended. "Everything was perfect: a true fairy's feast."

"I see you liked more than the food," he teases, cupping my cheeks with both hands and easing my chin upward till my eyes meet his once more. "A redcap indeed," he says playfully, his fingertips tracing the kerchief at my temples, where it dips behind my ears.

I flush hotly and lower my eyes, but I don't pull away from the hands that keep my face upturned toward his. Peeta's hold is so gentle that I could slip free of it with the smallest backward step, but I have no desire to do any such thing. "It's silly," I admit, wishing I could somehow hide my face but still feel his touch there. I remember thinking of the kerchief as a sweetheart ribbon and myself as the gift around which it's tied and long to bury my flaming cheeks in a snowbank.

"It's just…you called me 'little redcap' in the woods today," I explain, stumbling a little over the words as I persist in evading his eyes. "And then you painted that dove in a red cap – _my_ red cap – so when I looked at the handkerchief I thought –"

"It's anything _but_ silly, Katniss," he breaks in firmly, punctuating the remark with a sound, startling kiss to my forehead, right where the kerchief meets my skin. "You look like a fairytale maiden, all beribboned braids and little red kerchief-cap. You look –"

His voice breaks. "You're a New Year's vision," he says hoarsely. "A woodland beauty come in search of her sweetheart, adorned like a queen with his tokens."

I shake my head, my heart melting and breaking at once, for only part of what he says is untrue. "A little Seam girl playing at fairy tales, maybe," I concede and now I _do_ pull away from him, focusing my attention on the antlers in my hands. "I'm hardly a beauty and I've got no sweetheart to speak of."

But even as the words leave my lips I'm thinking how badly these antlers need a sweetheart ribbon, woven among the tines or simply tied at the base of one branch in a cheerful bow. I should have gone to my room before calling out to Peeta like some sort of blind romantic fool, should have found a red ribbon – the one Peeta tied around my New Year's applesauce, maybe – to seal this gift for my sweetheart.

"You'll forgive me if I don't agree," Peeta says softly, and I look up to meet the saddest smile I think he's ever worn in my presence. I always counter his ridiculous remarks about my "beauty" so I can't think why this instance would upset him so much. He's surely not challenging the second part of my statement – namely, that I have a sweetheart. He doesn't – _can't_ – know how I feel about him, not when I've only just discovered it myself, and we've established that no boy wants me for his own.

I don't know what to say in reply to such a statement and so I default to the last thing on my mind: my incomplete gift. "Wait here," I tell him, pressing the antlers into his hands. "I'll be right back."

Moving with the furious focus of a hummingbird, I'm at my drawer of precious things in two heartbeats, unwinding the red ribbon from my jar of applesauce, then just as swiftly I'm back in the hallway with Peeta, tying the vibrant satin around an antler tine in a merry bow. "There," I declare, breathless but oddly, overwhelmingly relieved to have done it. "It's a proper present now."

I look up, my lips curving in an echo of the persistent, foolishly happy smile I wore for ten minutes in the stable this afternoon, to find Peeta gaping at me. His eyes are wide, almost incredulous, and all at once I realize the enormity of what I've just done.

I might as well have tied the ribbon around his arm and kissed its bow for good measure.

"You – you didn't get any ribbons for New Year's," I blurt, crashing through the words like a terrified doe in a thorn-thicket and not caring if I get scratched on the way because he can't – _can't_ – think for even one moment that the antlers are a real sweetheart gift and I the would-be sweetheart. "Not from your sweetheart or anyone, and you're special – _so_ special, Peeta," I tell him, repeating for emphasis because I'm not sure he really understands. "You deserve a hundred red ribbons, and…and the antlers needed a festive touch to be a real present, a-and –"

But that's all the further I get before strong arms enfold me and my stammering mouth meets the warm musky skin of Peeta's neck. "Oh Katniss," he moans, squeezing me so tightly that it crushes the breath from my lungs, and he makes a ragged little sound, somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. "Little Katniss," he croons, and his cheek rubs the crown of my head in a nuzzling caress. "Why are you so sweet to me?" he whispers.

 _Because I_ love _you!_ my exasperated heart bellows, but at my stubborn brain and throat and tongue, not my beloved boy. _Tell him_ something _worthwhile or you'll be the death of me!_

"Because," I whisper against his throat, curling fistfuls of the wool beneath my fingers, "you're the most precious thing in the world to me, Peeta Mellark."

I feel his pulse stumble beneath my cheek before I hear his gasp.

It's a feeble substitute for the cry of my heart, but as the words leave my lips I realize how significant this revelation truly is, as much to me as to Peeta. I love him, so much that my heart is bursting with it, but I've just confessed an even more startling truth.

Peeta Mellark means more to me than anyone or anything in the world.

More than Prim. More than my father and every last cherished memory of him; every song and tale and stolen Sunday in the woods. More than the heritage of the family plant book or my father's bow or my entire drawer of precious things.

I'm not sure when it happened or how – if it was the cause of my love for Peeta or the result of it – but I'm as convicted in this realization as I am in my newly discovered love for him.

There is nothing in the world that means more to me – or, I suspect, ever will again – than Peeta Mellark.

His pulse is rapid against my cheek and I'm reminded of Granny Ashpet, the cougar who fell in love with a sparrow. I wonder if the devotion of a wild thing frightens Peeta. If he sought to tame a pretty dove and got a hawk instead; a venomous copperhead where he wanted a peep-frog or a wolf instead of a doe.

All at once I want to apologize for being so fierce and wild and frightening. Peeta is the very definition of _nurture_ : a baker's son who creates beautiful things with his strong hands, who feasts birds and Seam children on the finest sweets and whose touch is compassion itself, and I am a feral beast. A misguided lynx who chose this gentle, perfect human boy for her mate and brings him the choicest portions of her kills – meat and feather and fur and bone – as presents.

If his aunt wasn't a butcher I would've given him the bucket of deer's blood and the snow-packed organs to boot.

I try to pull away, mortified by these crude manifestations of a love that he can't possibly want, and twist in his arms like the wild thing that I am, but Peeta only snugs me tighter against him and rocks me a little from side to side. "Shh, little songbird," he soothes. "Why are you so horrified by your feelings? Do you really have no idea how precious they are?"

"I'm a wild thing," I whimper and feel wetness beading at the corners of my eyes. "I give you the most horrible presents a-and…you don't want me to care about you."

" _Katniss,_ " he groans, and he eases me back – gently and carefully, without loosening his hold – to look me in the eyes. His own are dark with warmth and compassion and a shadow of heartbreaking grief. "Everything you give me is a treasure," he murmurs, and he leans down to press his forehead to mine. "A perfect, priceless treasure, and your affection – your…your _care_ –" he clarifies with a brush of his nose against mine and a shallow, hitching sigh – "is most precious of all."

I shake my head against his. "No," I choke, the word muddled by the sob brimming in my throat, because this is just more kind lies. Or rather, he means them as kindness but they hurt far more than the truth would. "You don't mean –"

"I _do_ mean, Katniss," he breaks in, so fiercely that it makes my heart falter and miss a beat, and he leans away again to meet my eyes. His own are still warm but there's a heat behind it now; a hunger, even a desperation. "Your gifts are precious," he says and his voice is husky, almost rough. " _You_ are precious. More than a palace full of furs and pearls and gold."

I gape at him for a split second before shaking away these foolish, beautiful lies. "Don't make fun of me," I growl, a lynx once more. "I meant what I said –"

"And so do I," he replies, but his voice has softened to a soothing timbre once more. "I should have said something sooner but I didn't want to upset you. You are a _treasure_ , Katniss Everdeen," he sighs, stealing a hand to bring to my cheek. "A magnificent wild creature whose friendship I never expected and whose care… I can scarcely believe that you could care for me," he whispers. "A woman strong and solitary and lovely as the moon, but your gifts… Your gifts make it impossible to deny, and it's almost more than I can bear."

His words are tangling up my head like Granny Ashpet's poetic riddles. A moment ago I was alternately trying to make him believe and forget that he means more to me than anything in the whole world and now he's talking about me as though I'm the very same to him. It's not love but it's exquisitely close; a consolation prize that I could never have expected, and I can't decide whether I want to embrace it with all my might or run away from it as fast as possible.

"Your sweetheart," I croak, but it's a weak protest. The last instinctive thrash of a fox kit who's just realized how wonderful it feels to be held by a human boy. The moment before she realizes she's been tamed and accepts it, melting into his arms with a contented coo.

"My sweetheart is a dream, Katniss," he says, and the sorrow in his eyes stops my breath. "As attainable as the moon. I honestly don't know if we'll ever be married and –"

"You will," I interject firmly, ignoring the fact that this marriage will shatter me to pieces, because I can't bear the thought of Peeta aching for his sweetheart for the rest of his life.

He shakes his head. "There's more to it than you could imagine," he says sadly. "And in any case, there's no understanding between us; no pledge or promise. She has no idea that I love her."

"Have you given her a sweetheart ribbon?" I ask, a little too sharply, and Peeta's eyes go wide.

He stares at me – _into_ me, it seems – and I'm sure he's about to tell me to mind my own business when he clears his throat softly and says, "Yes."

"Oh," I croak, because I'd expected this and more besides – sleighfuls of furs and jewels and fine presents delivered to his sweetheart's family and red ribbons twined around every last gift – but I wasn't prepared for how badly it would hurt to hear. "Well, then she's got _some_ idea that you love her.

"I don't suppose you'll be needing this after all," I declare with false brightness and wriggle free of his arms to reach for the ribbon on the antlers, which he's managed to hold onto all this while, but to my surprise Peeta draws them to his chest and curls a protective hand around the bow.

"I-I'd like to keep it," he says, with an odd little tremor in his voice. "I mean…if you still want me to have it."

I blink in puzzlement. He obviously doesn't intend to wear the ribbon – would a prince wear a blackbird's token? – but it still means something to him. I wonder if he has a drawer of precious things too, and what he keeps there.

"Yes," I breathe, allowing my fingertips one tender, unhurried stroke across the back of his hand where it guards the red ribbon, and wonder if he knows that my heart is tied there with it. "I want you to have it."

He gasps at the touch and I jerk away from him, blushing and mortified. He knows, or he's guessed. I shouldn't have touched him like that; like a lover – like _my_ lover – and –

"Your _hands_ , Katniss," he rasps, his bright eyes awed as he reaches for me. "Your fingertips feel like _velvet._ "

He sets the antlers on the floor with breathless care, as though they're made of porcelain or glass, and takes one of my hands in both of his. His fingers explore every contour with greedy curiosity, crossing my palm in small circles and rubbing each finger from base to tip, and when he's done he gently turns my wrist and savors the back of my hand with equal relish. All the while he makes little sounds in his throat, gasps and moans and quiet whimpers that, coupled with his touch, make my belly grow warm and heavy and ache.

"So soft," he says raggedly, almost to himself, accentuating the words with a deep slow swirl of his thumb. " _So_ soft."

I wonder madly how it would feel to lie naked beneath him and drink in those primal little sounds and ardent exclamations as he explores something far more intimate than my hands.

I'm still wearing my father's hunting jacket over my sweater, having been too impatient to stamp the snow from my boots, let alone shuck my coat, and Peeta edges a hand inside the cuff with a grunt of frustration and longing, making me gasp, as much with pleasure as surprise. I'd thought there was nothing especially intimate about hands but the feel of Peeta reaching under my clothes – even just the cuff of my jacket – to touch more of my skin kindles a damp heat in the strange secret place between my legs. It's startling and exhilarating all at once.

"What magic is this?" Peeta whispers, curling his hand around my forearm, and I'm not sure I can find words to answer him. I'm not sure I'll ever find words to speak again.

"I-It's the tanning," I confess in a croak. "The brain oils that you use to make the slurry – the mix for soaking the skin. They help make the deerskin soft and…a-and so they soften the skin of the person working. Temporarily," I add quickly, shamed by the deception, but Peeta is already smiling and shaking his head.

"My huntress," he says, reaching for my other hand and cradling them both between his. "Every day you astonish me with some new beauty and just as quickly try to hide it away. I made you a bath," he explains, his cheeks pinking bashfully. "I thought, after working so hard, you'd want things to soothe and soften your hands, but you've done far better for yourself than I could, and by working on your deerskin, no less."

I narrowly stop myself from correcting _Your deerskin._ "A bath sounds _amazing_ ," I assure him. I should have expected it after my long day of work, especially seeing him leave the bathroom with steam-frizzled curls, but I still can't prevent the skip of my heart at his thoughtfulness. "And I'll definitely smell better after a bath than I do after tanning work," I add wryly.

He shakes his head slowly but his gentle smile never wavers. "When will you understand, Katniss?" he says, but it doesn't feel like a question. "How radiant you are, always. When you work with skins you smell musky," he murmurs, raising my hands a little, easing them apart, and nestling his face into the valley between. "Like a woman and a wild thing at once," he sighs against my palms.

My father used to tell a story about just such a creature; a bittersweet tale of a man – a hunter, a tradesman, a farmer; every retelling was a little different – who came home from his labors to find his house neat and tidy with supper on the stove and the beautiful young woman who had done all of this waiting to welcome him into her arms. Naturally, he married her and they were happy for some time, but he came to notice a muskiness about their bedcovers and soon discovered that his bride was in fact a fox, who shed her skin in his presence to take human form. The appalled husband drove her from the house in horror and she was neither seen nor heard from again.

 _If your grandfather had done as much, I wouldn't be here to tell the tale,_ my father chuckled at the ending, _nor you to hear it, catkin._ _A wild thing who loved a human boy so much that she shed her skin to be with him; t'was just such a maid my papa longed for, and none other. What mattered a little musk in her hair or loam about her paws if he could share his home with such a fierce and magnificent vixen?_

 _A fierce and magnificent vixen,_ I think as Peeta lingers with his face burrowed between my palms, and blush deeply. My hair has grown long and sleek as a pelt since I came to live here and I most assuredly smell of animal musk, especially tonight, but if I shed my skin for Peeta, to keep house for him like a Merchant girl, he would never even consider making me his wife.

I'd laugh at the thought if it didn't hurt so much. If I weren't a wild creature in truth, tamed by food and gentleness and love of a human boy.

I curve my hands a little to cradle his face and feel as much as hear him moan; a sound that sends shivers of pleasure trickling down my back. However greedy and foolish my longings, one thing is exquisitely clear: Peeta _loves_ the feel of my brain-softened hands, and it's all I can do not to touch him _everywhere_ in search of more ecstatic little sounds.

I stroke his cheek with my thumb and am rewarded with a ragged exhalation. _I could skip the bath and just hold you,_ I tell him silently. _We could skip supper too, for that matter, and I could climb into your lap and push up my sleeves and touch – and touch and touch – you till we were both dazed and spent with it._

Like a splash of cold water to the face, I realize that Peeta probably isn't accustomed to being touched at all, especially since moving out here. Pollux and Lavinia surely hug him and would tend to him if he was sick or injured, but no one simply touches him for comfort or pleasure, like a parent or lover would…no one except me. _Animals die without touch;_ my father told me this many times as we watched squirrels tumbling over each other in play or doves preening one another, _and the human animal is even more desperate with its vulnerable expanse of bare skin and finely crafted hands, ever reaching out for tangible compassion and love._

It's not my touch Peeta wants and loves but human touch in general. My softened hands feel nicer than my calluses, to be sure, but otherwise there's nothing special about them, or me.

I slip my hands free of Peeta's but he catches me gently by the wrists before I can step away from him. "What is it, Katniss?" he asks, the words quiet but direct. "I can feel it in your touch. One minute you're soft and open and just…melting into me," he says with a little catch in his voice. "And the next you're like stone, rigid and closed off and you can't get away fast enough. Is it me?" he wonders softly. "Something I say or do? I ask myself that every time but it never seems like anything's changed from one moment to the next. I'm hugging you or you're hugging me when all of a sudden you freeze up and push away, like you've been hurt or are afraid you will be."

This, of course, is true, if not quite the way he perceives it, and for a moment all I can do is stare at him, startled and speechless. I never knew he could tell – never thought he would care – that I was withdrawing from him, but with these words it's clear that he's been aware, maybe longer than I have, and that it's confused and even saddened him. I can't imagine why and then I recall rare moments from my childhood when I held a wild animal, a dazed fledgling or a merry peeper or once, for half a heartbeat, a terrified rabbit kit that had nearly become a snake's breakfast. My father steadied my hands and gently stayed my fingers when I tried to pet or cuddle with too much enthusiasm, and he always hugged me afterward when the animal inevitably sprang from my hold to return to its burrow or mother. _Letting go is the most important part of taming, catkin,_ he whispered against my braids as I sniffled, my heart breaking for just one more finger-stroke over powdery feathers or a downy belly. _But that doesn't ever make it easy._

I look at this boy who understands taming perfectly well, despite all the reasons why he shouldn't, and wonder how he's borne it this long. However content he may be to feed and house a wild thing, the reward of taming is companionship and devotion, whether he expects it or not: feathers against his cheek and soft paws on his chest and an eager snout nuzzling its way into the musky burrow of his neck. I remember all too clearly how it hurt to feel an animal struggle from my hands after I had soothed its trembling with gentle pets and sometimes even a stolen kiss on the head, and I realize that this is what I've been doing to Peeta all along.

The only pain that results from his touch stems from my own heart and mind, which are foolish enough to want something they've always known they couldn't have.

"I'm sorry, Peeta," I whisper. "I never meant to hurt you –"

"You didn't," he assures me, releasing my hands and raising his to cradle my nape once more. " _Never,_ Katniss. I was afraid I'd been hurting _you_."

"You couldn't," I assure him in turn, leaning back a little to rub my head against one strong hand in a stolen caress. _Perhaps I'm a vixen after all,_ I think wryly. A little girl-fox, hungry for her boy's touch but terrified when it's given, so she steals pats and strokes on her own terms. "I guess I'm just…more wild than I realized."

"And all the lovelier for it," he says with a smile. "I've lived in the woods long enough to recognize the beauty of doves and does – of all manner of wild things, Katniss – and their trust is a treasure beyond price. I wouldn't expect it to be easily won."

"But you _have_ won it," I whisper, recalling the cautious brush of his fingers over my cardinal-cap as I bent to strap him into his skis this afternoon. Peeta knows how to steal a pat just as well as I know how to weasel one out of him. "This bird – this kit, this cougar-cub – is tame," I tell him; another confession, if not a monumental one, but he gazes at me as though I've laid the shining moon in his hands.

" _Katniss,_ " he breathes. "It's not…you don't have to say – I didn't mean –"

I lean in and silence him with a nudge of my nose against his; a fox kit's kiss, and I feel irrepressible, jubilant laughter bubbling its way up my throat.

How could this not be enough? How could I ever have thought this wasn't enough? Snout-kisses and beak nuzzles and Peeta's strong hands cradling me like a fallen nestling; surely this is _more_ than enough to content me for the rest of my days.

A giddy fountain of giggles escapes me, making Peeta's brows fly up toward his hairline, and I duck my face to hide my laughter. But this time, I have no interest in pulling away.

I like this place. I belong here.

_I belong with you._

"What's so funny?" Peeta asks, and I peek through laugh-squinted lashes to find his lips curved in a hopeful half-smile and his eyes utterly confused.

"Nothing," I giggle with an unconvincing shake of my head, quickly hiding my face again. "I'm just… _happy._ Everything's so good."

"Yes," he answers softly, and I look up to find him gazing at me with eyes at once somber and full of tenderness. "You're right. Everything's _perfect_."

I curl forward to enclose him in a tight hug and his arms settle around my shoulders in turn. "Your bath's getting cold," he reminds me, a quiet murmur against my kerchief, but there's no real concern behind it. He sounds as content as I feel, and in about as great a hurry to be separated. "Take absolutely all the time you want to wash up, relax; just soak, if you like," he says. "Supper will keep."

I sigh against his neck, a resigned little puff of breath. "I'll take my bath," I concede, as though doing so is some great personal favor or thankless chore, "but I can't guarantee a lengthy one. I want to see what new magic you've crafted for our supper."

"I guarantee you'll be disappointed," he replies, but the warning is accompanied by a chuckle. "It's tasty enough but a bit lacking a in the magic department."

I lean back to meet his eyes. "I'll be the judge of that," I tease, already envisioning all manner of delicious wonders beneath the dishtowels in the living room.

Our bodies part with palpable reluctance and Peeta bends to retrieve the antlers. "These are truly magnificent, Katniss," he says, running a hand along one branch of stony tines. "I'll keep them somewhere special and if you decide you'd rather make them into something, just say the word and I'll give them back right away."

My mind flickers briefly to an antler-crown on a curly head, gilded by firelight, and a black-haired doe maiden heavy with fawns. "I won't," I assure him with a smile that's only slightly feigned. "They're perfect just as they are."

After the whirlwind of emotion that's buffered me about today I should be inured to strong responses for the remainder of the evening, but still I catch my breath and nearly burst into tears at the sight of the bath Peeta prepared for me. Each corner of the tub surround holds a stout beeswax pillar, melted down during our conversation to form a shallow pool of honey-wax at its crown and fill the room with its sweet earthy fragrance, and the tub itself is brimming with a steaming, cream-colored liquid with a shimmer of golden oil across its surface. He's added warm milk to the water, I realize, if not replaced the water entirely; an expense so exorbitant that it nearly stops my heart. But more than this, the steam rising from the tub – no, the entire _room_ – smells of Peeta; of the honey-cream-and-cloves of his pale golden soap.

Peeta's given me a bath fit for a fairytale queen: warm milk made radiant with rich oils and flickering golden honey-light, and perfumed it with the scent of his body. If I didn't know better I'd think it was some kind of unimaginably cruel joke; a taunting reminder of what I can never, _ever_ have. As it is, it must be a mistake, and a well-meaning, wholly innocent one at that. Peeta must have chosen that soap because he likes it or thinks I might like it, or maybe even because its fragrance complements the candles.

Beside the tub is a chair draped with my robe and a heap of plush towels, as usual, and also a little table holding a mug – cream-coffee, I determine with a sniff, sweetened with floral honey and sprinkled with nutmeg – with a red ribbon tied around its handle and a plate of New Year's cookies: crosshatched circles of peanut butter, golden shortbread squares and tiny, adorable butter-cookie snowmen. The plate is framed with freshly cut evergreen sprigs, each wound with bright scraps of red ribbon, and laid across the cookies is a handwritten note:

_For my little redcap_

I bring a hand to my mouth and bury the sob of longing in my palm. Peeta Mellark is the kindest, sweetest boy on this earth and he's very clearly doing these things to be nice, not to hurt me – _never_ to hurt me. He has no idea that I love him, and even if he did – horrifying as that is to imagine – he would never taunt me with mock-demonstrations of love. He made me a pretty dove cake and chose to echo its festive imagery in my bathtime snack; nothing more. He probably thought it would make me happy.

Determined to be so, I pick up a butter-cookie snowman and let it melt on my tongue as I carefully untie the kerchief and set to unplaiting my braids.

 _Peeta is indeed the very definition of nurture,_ I think with a smile, reaching for the beribboned mug to wash down my cookie. _Feasting birds and Seam children on the finest sweets, and I am both at once._

I sink into the tub with a luxuriant sigh. The milk, water, or combination thereof is so rich that I can't see my body beneath the surface, and I wonder madly if Peeta used _cream_ to fill my bath, in whole or in part. In ancient days, my father said, dairymaids splashed their faces with fresh cream from their pails to give them a pure and dewy complexion, and Prim always wanted to try it after milking Lady – goat's milk being even richer and more nourishing than cow's milk – though we couldn't spare a drop, let alone for anything so frivolous.

I try to imagine writing to her about this and flush with something halfway between guilt and shame. _I spent the afternoon elbow-deep in mashed deer brains,_ I think, _and when I came in Peeta had made a milk bath for me._ I know he likes to treat his huntress, especially on days of rough or dirty work, but this fit-for-a-fairy-queen bath is the outside of enough.

But that doesn't stop me dipping my head beneath the surface and working the fragrant spiced cream into every strand of my hair and every inch of my scalp, nor soaking and dozing and nibbling lazily at cookies till the bath is tepid and my eyes drowsing to a firm close. I vaguely recall that I'm supposed to rinse off and pat myself just dry enough to reach the cave shower without leaving a trail of milky footprints across the floor, then I luxuriate for another five minutes or more beneath warm waterfalls, stealing another silky palmful of Peeta's golden soap to rub over my body, just in case the rinse water washes away too much of his scent.

I fully intend to dream in shades of honey, cream, and cloves tonight.

I slide open the shower door to find Lavinia waiting outside, her fiery hair braided around her head with a red and white ribbon woven through the plait and her porcelain cheeks ever so slightly pink. "Oh, for pity's sake," I say, taking the towel from her hands with a laugh, but there's really nothing more I can add because this room will be bugged too. "You could've at least warmed my clothes this morning, slugabed," I tease her, but my eyes are wholly serious and, I hope, conveying a little of the conversation I had with Pollux this morning.

For the first time ever she lets me dry myself, but only because she's holding up a piece of paper for me to read as I do so, covered in the same elegant handwriting that I glimpsed on the page hidden inside Pollux's slate.

_Read fast because I need to burn this._

_I'm sorry for keeping our marriage from you. I have a lot of reasons to be scared, for Pollux and Peeta as well as myself, and it seemed like it would be easier that way. But I realized last night that it's not. I need my husband, fool that he is. I need to be with him. I won't make a show of us, obviously, but I can't keep apart from him like I have been. I hope you can understand._

_Actually, I know that you do. I've known for a while that you love Peeta and I know how it must hurt to finally realize it. I didn't want to love Pollux – or_ _anyone_ _, ever again – but he was so good and sweet and gentle, not to mention ridiculous and hopeful and unwaveringly persistent. I know it doesn't seem possible right now, but it's going to be okay. Much better than okay, though it may take longer than you think. Just keep loving him and things will come right in the end._

I look up from the page to meet her stunning caramel eyes. She shrugs delicately, as though she hasn't just given me a wealth of perplexing words to ponder, and I shake my head in reply. "Now who's being ridiculous and hopeful?" I ask her.

She turns the page toward her for a moment and traces purposefully through the words then turns the paper back toward me with _and unwaveringly persistent_ underlined by one slender finger.

I chuckle. "I thought that was Pollux's job," I tell her, and she takes out her slate to reply: _Yes, but after you live with him for a while, his stupid optimism starts to grow on you._ The words are sharp but she smiles as she shares them; a soft, unfamiliar, ever so slightly wry smile that makes it perfectly clear how completely she adores her husband.

She burns the page on my bedroom hearth, chasing down every last flake of paper-ash with the poker as I comb out my damp hair and carefully replait it in its sweetheart-ribboned braids. It's still the day after New Year's, luxurious bath or no, and I fully intend to wear my ribbons until tomorrow morning.

I wonder if I dare wear them even longer. If I could plait Peeta's ribbon into my single braid every morning without him noticing and tie my hair back each night with the ribbon from my night companion. Should I tuck them away in my drawer of precious things, only glancing at them once or twice a day, or wear them daily as bright beacons of love? _My_ love, of course; not a sweetheart's love for me, but love nonetheless.

Lavinia touches my shoulder to gently secure my attention and places a small item in my lap: the envelope of butcher paper containing my sugar-dove, which I so painstakingly preserved then left behind in my haste to bring Peeta his antlers. Grateful and more than a little relieved to see it safely in the house, I ease the fragile sugar pane free of its wrap and give a quiet whimper at the sight of the Katniss-dove and her little holiday feast; the very image of the snack Peeta prepared for my bath.

"I know; I'm pathetic," I lament to Lavinia, who shakes her head firmly before easing the sugar-dove from my hands and setting her alongside the night-sky box on my dresser.

 _You_ _love_ _him,_ she writes on her slate, _and he's the very essence of love._

Once I've read this she wipes it away quickly – her slate is substantially smaller than Pollux's, something I've never had cause to notice before – to add: _Men try all their lives to come up with the sort of sweet gesture that he does without thinking, and I promise you: he thought about that little bird cake a_ _lot_ _._

I smile so hard that my cheeks ache.

Lavinia offers to help me dress but I good-naturedly chase her out. She and Pollux want to be together badly enough that both of them mentioned it to me today, and I've managed to get dressed without any assistance for a good five years now. "Make an early night of it," I tell her. "I can put myself to bed."

I firmly resist the encroaching blush at the thought of what she'll be doing for all of that time and she thanks me with a kiss to my cheek and a blush of her own.

I wonder what it's like to be Pollux's wife. If that silly, ridiculous man has a passionate side as well as a tender one, and whether the lack of a tongue makes any difference in kissing. I wonder how a bearded mouth feels against your skin.

My father often wore a beard through the cold months and my mother always seemed to enjoy it, combing her fingertips through the curls as they kissed and rubbing her cheek languidly against his whenever they embraced. Once or twice I peered across the bedroom in the pre-dawn light to see him kissing her throat or her shoulder as her eyes fluttered closed in bliss and wondered how it could feel nice in any way to have a bristly mouth moving over your bare skin.

I think of the Mellarks with their beards of ashy curls and wonder how many winters it will be before my boy wears a beard himself. I wonder whether his whiskers will be tawny like Luka's curls, ruddy blonde like their mother's hair, or the creamed-honey shade of his arm hair and eyelashes.

 _His first beard will be like chick's down,_ I decide with a slow, foolish smile: _yellow and fine and softer than velvet._ I wonder how it will feel against my cheek and whether I'll get to feel it anywhere else.

It's a little late for supper but still early to be dressing for bed, so I grab a pair of leggings and, after a great deal of thought and excavation of my drawers, a fawn-colored sweater with sleeves that will push comfortably to my elbows. The milk-and-oil bath left my body silky from head to toe – even my hair feels smoother than usual; so lush and soft that it seems a shame to braid it – but my hands and forearms remain somehow, impossibly, softer still from the brain-tan. On the off-chance that Peeta might want to touch them again, I want to be as accessible as possible.

I slip out of my robe and instinctively reach for the sweater. I've lived here for over a month now with enough pretty underthings to change them on a whim if I chose, but this close to bed a bra seems pointless. I'm so slight that the garment makes little difference anyway, and wearing one has always felt more like a matter of manners. No Merchant girl would go bare-breasted beneath her sweater; a camisole would be worn at the very least.

I shrug this aside – it's only supper with Peeta and he's seen me in a nightgown, for pity's sake – and thread my arms into the sleeves, but when I reach above my head to pull the sweater down I feel an unexpected jiggle against my ribs.

Frowning, I peek down at the dark-tipped little mounds that have mysteriously swollen from pigeon eggs to chicken eggs, seemingly overnight. They're still small by anyone's definition but their added heft and movement absolutely requires containment, unless I want to face Peeta – who bought all those pretty undergarments for me in the first place – with my breasts bobbing about freely.

Flushing at the thought, I slip back out of the sweater and trade it for the first bra to hand, only to give a squawk of dismay as soon as I've hooked it in place. The cups still fit, of course, but my breasts are no longer flat, formless nubbins that disappear beneath the fabric. A plump little rise of flesh just peeps out on either side; two dusky curves, like twin waxing crescent moons, and I cover my chest with an arm as my cheeks and throat flood with fierce prickly heat.

Living with Peeta has clearly nourished more than my hair and muscles.

I tug on the sweater with a fury and shove the sleeves to my elbows. The fact that my breasts are growing – are already bigger than I remember them _ever_ being, even before this winter – is of no consequence whatsoever. I can still wear the bras Peeta bought for me and really, I should be _less_ embarrassed than before, when my pigeon-egg breasts were swimming in their tiny cups. With this added bit of curve those bras have become worthwhile; they're no longer a joke on a flat-chested Seam girl.

In any case, Peeta will neither notice the difference nor care two pins about it. My breasts are easily the furthest thing from his mind.

I slip on the leggings but leave my feet bare of stockings or slippers, telling myself that Peeta doesn't mind me running around barefoot while firmly denying that I have any foolish hopes of him touching or kissing my milk-softened feet as we sit on the sofa for our supper.

I'm about to make my way downstairs when I recall the ribbons that decorated my snack earlier and duck back into the bathroom. Lavinia hasn't cleared the dishes yet, which is unusual but exactly what I was hoping for, and I pluck up the ribbons like rare winter berries. These should go straight into my drawer of precious things but I want to wear them in my hair, every last one of them, when I go down for supper tonight. Red ribbons everywhere, glinting against my black hair like roses or rubies. Peeta may not – will _never_ – know that I love him, but he can recognize a sweetheart's tokens on me, whether he intended them to be thus or not, and I want him to know how much I treasure every one of his gifts, down to the smallest scrap of ribbon.

I tie the shorter ribbons around my braids at neat intervals, dividing the plaits into long sections like the fairytale maiden Peeta compared me to earlier, and after several moments' thought I tie the ribbon from the mug handle – a proper sweetheart ribbon, roughly two feet in length – around my head like a crown, the way Peeta tied his ribbon on me last night, completing the fairytale image. My kerchief has been relegated to a place of honor – folded around the note Peeta left with my bathtime snack; that tiny tender scrap of paper addressing me as his redcap – in my drawer of precious things, but I know I'll wear it again soon.

Tomorrow, likelier than not.

I give myself a thorough looking-over in the bathroom mirror and marvel at how much has changed since this morning, when I plaited two red ribbons into my braids with trembling hands and assured myself that I neither loved Peeta nor wanted him for my own. Tonight I know both of those things to be wholly untrue, if every bit as impossible as they were this morning, and yet I've proudly tied every last one of Peeta's ribbons into my hair as though I were the jewel of his heart.

 _I am a New Year's vision,_ I think, gazing at the radiant stranger in the mirror. _A woodland beauty come in search of her sweetheart, adorned like a queen with his tokens._

I wonder why it's less terrifying to face the boy you love once you know that you love him. Why I'm not half-sick at the thought of going down to supper with a headful of sweetheart ribbons declaring my love, knowing that he will never love me in return.

 _Because love is not an expectation, catkin,_ murmurs my father in my mind, an echo of a conversation from my childhood. _It doesn't cease to be simply because it isn't returned. That's why so many hearts break: the weight of love, borne alone and unreturned, becomes too much. Sometimes they shatter, sometimes they split cleanly in two and fall apart, and sometimes they crack slowly and silently over a period of weeks, months, even years._

 _Of course, any broken thing can be repaired,_ he explained, _but not all choose this path. Some prefer a heart full of holes that can never truly hold love again, and for those pitiable folk whose hearts have been shattered, every last piece must be found before the heart can be made whole once more, and some of those pieces they'd rather remain lost forever._

 _My heart will never be broken,_ I told him firmly, with an eight-year-old's stubbornness and ingenuity. _I'll build a great stone wall around it so no one can get in._

 _It's rather late for that, catkin,_ he replied with a gentle laugh. _Your heart is brimming with love already: for your mama, your sister, and me. What's more, you could build a tower as high as the sky and your sweetheart would still find your heart. Be he a sparrow sheltering at your shutters or a mousekin burrowing through the soil to make a nest in your cellar, a bee in the honeysuckle growing up your walls or a sunbeam spilling across your hearthrug at noon, he'll find you and you'll love him so fiercely that you'll tear down those walls with your bare hands just to embrace him._

I look in the mirror again and raise a hand to cover my naked heart. "You were wrong, Dad," I whisper. "I didn't have to tear down the walls. They crumbled when I saw him."

I splash my face with a little cool water and make my way to the stairs to find Peeta waiting for me at the bottom. "My huntress!" he cries up to me merrily. "Returned from her labors at last! Your supper and tale await in the living room."

He's being childish and ridiculous and so utterly adorable that I almost can't breathe. "I was only taking a bath," I remind him, my cheeks on fire, but my voice is too giddy to convey anything but delight. I try to slow my feet on the stairs but they're too eager to bring me to him, and just as I reach the last step he leans forward with a grin to scoop me up in his arms: one arm around my back and the other beneath my knees, the way my father sometimes picked up my mother when he was being particularly infuriating or romantic.

His curls have softened to fuzzy puffs of duckling down and I want to bury my face in them and nuzzle him to bits. "And hello to you too," I tease breathlessly, curling an arm around his neck. "What's the occasion?"

"I do believe I've tamed a bird," he confides, his bright eyes twinkling. "The rarest and loveliest in all the woods."

"Don't get your hopes up," I warn, but playfully in my turn. "I think this one is just a common blackbird. There are thousands like her in these parts."

"A black bird she is indeed," he concedes softly, "but this one has hints of scarlet in her plumage." He leans in to nudge one of my beribboned braids with his nose and I want to kiss him so badly that I almost turn to catch his lips. "I've never seen her like, let alone so close," he goes on huskily. "But I think she might be a mockingjay."

"A mockingjay?" I echo and wonder at the tremor in my voice. Mockingjays are hardly rare in these woods – or anywhere else in Panem, to my knowledge – but I've never seen one feeding in Peeta's garden. A uniquely beautiful cross between a Capitol mutt and a native species skilled at mimicry, these small crested songbirds can perfectly imitate the pitches of a human voice and even repeat whole songs.

They were especially beloved of my musical father, who would stay an extra half-hour in the woods for the sake of just one mockingjay, to teach it a new song and hear it sung back to him against the whisper of the trees.

Glossy black songbirds who are fiercely protective of their nests, who loved my father like one of their own and gladly echoed his songs… _I could be a mockingjay,_ I think.

"Perhaps a red-capped mockingjay," I tell Peeta with a smile.

He insists on carrying me into the living room despite my token protests and deposits me like a queen in a nest of wool blanket on one side of the sofa, then he seats himself beside me with far less aplomb and whisks the dishtowels away from our meal with a silly little fanfare.

To say I'm disappointed would be a gross understatement.

I look between the box of Marko's jam jar pies and Peeta's face with a puzzled frown. "You didn't cook," I say, and the accusation comes out so mournful and pathetic that he bursts out laughing.

"Oh sweetheart, I _know_ ," he says, shaking his head and making a feeble effort to contain his amusement at my dismay. "I told you there was something very important that needed my attention, and it ended up taking more time than I'd expected. Also: I knew there was no way I'd get you to eat Marko's pies unless there was no alternative," he admits with a blush that's as much delight as sheepishness.

"You… _you_ …!" I sputter, but I know he's right, and that only makes it more infuriating. How many times have I turned down the mere _suggestion_ of Marko's amazing pies, insisting that I only need – and want – Peeta's baking? I've already forgotten that there was a New Year's box of miniature pies, each flavor carefully chosen by my sister and prepared by Peeta's acclaimed pieman-brother, and if I'd remembered them on my own, likelier than not I would have found some way to fob them off onto Pollux or even the birds in Peeta's garden.

"I know, it was terrible of me," he says, his blush deepening with proper shame now. "I feel awful, feeding you a meal that I didn't make myself, but Marko's pies really _are_ incredible and I didn't want them to get stale or go to waste. And I planned to share them with you so you'd only have to eat half of each," he adds hopefully, as though being required to eat just half of each of these amazing little pies might present a less agonizing trial.

I marvel at how quickly I've forgotten mint broth with pebbles and blackbirds in gravy. It's a truly shaming thought and one I decide to spare Peeta. "They'll be wonderful," I assure him. "And I'm more than happy to share them with you."

The jam jars are a little smaller than my palm, meaning that each pie will yield no more than three or four modest bites, and the first one Peeta takes out is, to my surprise, steaming from the slits in its crust. "Give me a little credit," he chides playfully, proffering a pair of spoons. "I heated the ones that are best served hot and chilled the ones that taste better cold."

"Well, that's something, I guess," I allow begrudgingly, but my grin firmly defeats the purpose. "If you'd just popped them all out of the icebox I'd take myself straight back upstairs without any supper at all."

I take one of the spoons and shift on the cushion to scoop out my first bite – and then I see it, bright against the evergreen wool of Peeta's sweater.

_A red ribbon._

A perfect sweetheart ribbon: glossy red satin, two feet in length, tied in a neat bow around his left arm.

The heart side, like wedding rings.

"Oh!" I squeak, dropping the spoon into my lap. "You – you _did_ get a ribbon."

I've never felt so stupid in all my life. _Of course_ he got a ribbon from his sweetheart; the venison parcels alone would have demanded it, and I've been so indignant on his behalf that he was probably too embarrassed – or simply too kind – to correct me. It's odd that he wouldn't have worn it for the whole day, but he's been so busy with baking and painting; maybe he was afraid he'd ruin it.

I resolve to find the antlers and steal back my stupid consolation-prize ribbon at the earliest opportunity.

"I did," Peeta replies, as calmly as if he's commenting on the weather. "It was a little late in coming but I figured it would still be okay to wear, since the day isn't quite over."

"Of course," I agree numbly. "Did, um…did Lavinia bring it from town, then?"

This seems likeliest, never mind that neither the sleigh nor Rye moved all day. Peeta's sweetheart would have had to trade something very fine to get him a red ribbon, especially the day after New Year's. I wonder if she sold some of the venison to Rooba; if her family was willing to give up a meal to save face in this lopsided courtship.

Peeta looks thoroughly nonplussed, as though I strung together a handful of random words into a phrase of utter nonsense, then his confusion clears to an expression of placid somberness, with just the tiniest flicker of a smile in-between.

"Actually, it was the funniest thing," he says. "I was upstairs preparing your bath when this stunning bird – a black bird with a red-capped head – came flying through the house, calling out for me. She brought me a present: a pair of antlers with a red ribbon tied around them," he explains without batting an eye. "I barely made it into the hallway before she was in my arms, nuzzling me with her beak."

"Ah," I reply, and wonder how I'm still sitting upright on this cushion when every part of me is melting in response to what he just said. "Sounds like a mighty big bird," I venture through lips that want nothing more than to sprawl into a smile or maybe kiss him breathless. "Flying up all those stairs while carrying a pair of antlers."

Peeta smiles at that; a soft, affectionate smile that makes my heart lurch against my breastbone, and shakes his head. "She was a tiny little thing," he says. "Mighty, yes – strong enough to bring down a grown deer – but small. Small enough to hold in my hands," he murmurs, his eyes on my hands in my lap. "With the softest feathers I've ever felt in my life."

"You're brave to wear it, then," I tell him quietly, reaching out to touch the ribbon with a fingertip. "Such a fearsome bird probably gave you a red ribbon to make you easier to find in her woods. To –"

My voice breaks. I fight with all my strength to keep the words in but they spill out anyway in a rush of breath. "To mark you as _her_ boy," I whisper, staring at the bright bow on his arm. "Birds do strange things."

"That sounds…nice," Peeta says after a long moment, his voice halting and a little hoarse. "I think I'd like to belong to her."

I lift my head with a start, frowning deeply. I don't know if he's making fun of me – making a joke out of that blurted cry from my heart – but what he's saying is backwards and all wrong. "That's not how it works," I say. "Wild things belong to the person who tames them, not the other way around."

He shakes his head slowly, his eyes at once pitying and strangely hopeful. "Oh Katniss," he says gently, "didn't your father ever tell you?" He sets the pie-jar down on the table then turns his left hand palm-up and rests it carefully on my knee. "Taming goes both ways," he murmurs, curling his fingers a little, as though beckoning. "A boy learns patience where a bird learns trust, but in the end both are tamed. They belong to each other: the boy to the bird every bit as much as she to him.

"So you see," he concludes softly, "if this rare bird is indeed tamed – if I have truly earned her trust and devotion – then I belong to her. I'm proud to wear her token, whether or not she ever chooses to claim me as her own."

I stare down at the strong hand lying open on my knee, as clear an invitation as breadcrumbs scattered over a frozen garden, and my heart races and trips and stumbles through its paces like a pursued fox with a mangled foreleg, desperate for flight yet incapable of making it more than a few futile feet before death crashes down upon it. I know what he's not saying – what he doesn't mean and absolutely never could – but even with that out of the equation, Peeta's suggesting that we belong to each other. That he is mine and, equally impossibly, I am his.

 _Yours,_ my heart whimpers. _Always and entirely yours._

"Your father told you that?" I whisper, and Peeta shakes his head. "Yours did," he whispers in reply.

I squeeze my eyes shut because this is too much; _far_ too much, never mind how badly I want it. Peeta's hand still rests on my knee, warm and open and heavy with anticipation, and my breath is a frightened fledgling struggling to take wing. Why am I so afraid to let him care for me? After a month of knowing to my very bones that my home is wherever he is and a day of silently, fiercely calling him _mine_ , why should the idea of belonging to each other be so terrifying?

Why is it so impossible for him to tie my ribbon around his arm when my hair is woven like a fairy queen's with half a dozen of his? Why can't I bear the idea of him wearing my token when this morning it was all that I wanted in the world?

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, easing his hand away from my leg, and the chill it leaves behind hurts more than the warm ache of anticipation. "I shouldn't have said – I didn't mean to upset you –"

I reach blindly for his hand and bring it to my lips because if I don't, I'll shatter into a million pieces. "No," I whimper against his knuckles. "You didn't. You were right; I –"

His other hand comes up to cradle my cheek and I break off with a little moan. "You are so precious to me, Peeta," I whisper. "I just…never thought I'd mean anything like that to you."

He gently tilts my face to meet his eyes. "Little redcap," he says, "why do you suppose I sat in the woods all this while with my hands full of breadcrumbs?"

I blink up at him, perplexed by these words, and he leans in slowly to press a kiss between my eyes: the sort of tender, inexorable, lingering kiss that one can't resist giving to a vulnerable animal, and I close my eyes with a bone-deep sigh. "Are you sure you want this bird?" I murmur, half in a dream. "There are dozens of prettier birds in these parts, with finer plumage and sweeter songs –"

"No, there aren't," he says patiently, his lips caressing the space between my brows. "I've wanted this bird – this _particular_ bird – for a very long time, Katniss. No other bird could begin to compare."

He leans away then, as unhurriedly as he leaned in, and I let my eyes drift open. His face is soft and content; almost dreamlike in its own right. "Well," I remark with a small, crooked smile, "it's not often you find a songbird that can bring down grown deer."

"Indeed," he replies with a smile of his own. "Will you share my brother's pies with me, my mighty little songbird?"

"Of course I will," I answer, and accordingly retrieve the forgotten spoon from my lap.

Peeta knows me far too well, because the first pie he presents – the one that will irrevocably establish my opinion of Marko's pies forever – is piping hot chicken pie, most likely the very same kind that Marko brought for my family that first desperate day after I left with Peeta. Tender pieces of chicken, redskin potatoes and sugar-sweet peas, all swimming in a rich, savory golden gravy. Two bites are nowhere near enough, and my spoon scrapes the tiny jar for leavings with the hopeful desperation of a hungry dog at a trash bin.

"You can lick it clean if you want," Peeta teases, his bright eyes dancing with amusement. "I won't tell him."

"I hate you," I inform him, scowling to hide a needling ache of guilt. Marko's pies are tasty enough in and of themselves, but Peeta knows how I love chicken. Starting with his brother's tiny, perfect chicken pie was a low blow.

Stupid chicken. Stupid, _stupid_ Peeta.

"No, you don't," he replies with a grin. "I think you love Marko's pies – which is entirely okay, by the way," he adds cheerfully. "I've been telling you from the first how amazing they are, and so has Prim. Come on," he says, easing the empty jar from the vise-grip of my hand. "Let's see if I can find something terrible to wash that nice chicken taste out of your mouth."

His second offering is little better. Marko made the pies in pairs, one sweet and one savory, and the impossibly wonderful chicken pie is accompanied by an apple pie with a crumble-top, like the one he brought my family.

Again, always, Peeta feeds me apples.

A sweet slice melts on my tongue, all caramel and cinnamon and whispers of ginger, and I set down my spoon with a frustrated clatter. "I'm going to get some bread and cold meat," I announce. "Do you want anything?"

Peeta catches my arm before I can stand and tugs me a little ways toward him. "Yes," he replies. "I want you to sit here with me and enjoy my brother's pies. You don't have to admit it," he offers, his voice gentling, "if that's what's upsetting you. Just – think of it as helping me eat them up, maybe?" he suggests. "I'll tell him lots of nice things without ever implying that you _liked_ them –" the tiniest grin escapes him at that – "and in return we'll send a box of jar-cakes to Prim and make her eat them with him."

"Just pretend that I'm helping you?" I ask dubiously, but I can't bite back my own budding smile.

"And in return we'll make him and your sister absolutely miserable with my very best cakes," he promises. "Please, Katniss."

I regard him as sternly as I can manage. "There's only one way that's going to work," I warn – and scoot across the cushions to tuck myself snugly against his body.

"Oh," he says against my hair. His arms curl around me, tugging me closer still, and I can hear the smile in his voice as he goes on: "If I'd known that was all you needed, ornery bird, I'd have brought you over here right away."

Despite its somber beginning, supper proves to be a light-hearted and downright playful occasion. It's impossible to share a jam-jar-sized pie without a great deal of spoon-sparring, and Peeta and I finish the meal as we finished our bread pudding at lunch: nestled together with a dish between us and two spoons that more often than not are raised to each other's mouth.

"I'm counting the bites, little songbird," Peeta teases, ducking back from my spoon as I try to feed him a third bite of spicy sausage crumbles and scrambled egg in a peppered cream gravy, enveloped in a crisp biscuit crust. "I'm not going to deprive you of your New Year's present, even if this _is_ one of my favorites."

"That's a shame," I grumble playfully in reply while rapidly committing as much of this particular pie to memory as I can. I don't know when I'll have opportunity to prepare a meal for Peeta and I could never hope to replicate Marko's skills, but I can certainly manage sausage and scrambled egg in cream gravy and serve it up on a decent enough drop biscuit, especially with the superior flours Peeta stocks in his pantry.

Five pies in, my taste buds are forced to concede that Marko's crusts are indeed every bit as amazing as everyone says, though I firmly refuse to admit this to his brother. I still can't call them better than Peeta's but they're dangerously close to it; the perfect combination of salty and buttery and flaky on the tongue, and I no longer wonder at my sister devouring two of these every day for her lunch and immediately returning the jars in hopes of more tiny pies for the following day.

One pie in particular makes me catch my breath with its combination of flavors and the memory it instantly evokes. A surprisingly hearty confection, it's made with diced fruit – notably apples – and nuts and raisins in a dark, richly spiced sort of jam-sauce and reminds me strikingly of the bread Peeta saved my life with five years ago.

"Mince pie," Peeta explains, scooping out a second neat spoonful of filling for me. "It's a holiday favorite. Grandma Lydda always snuck a splash of her famous spiced wine into the mix for a richer flavor and a heady tang, and Marko's clearly carried on the tradition."

I tilt my head back against his, like a kit nuzzling her dam. "It tastes like hope and life," I murmur. "Like…family and home."

He dips his head forward to rub his cheek against mine. "I've never combined mince pie with bread pudding," he says huskily. "Would you like me to try?"

"Yes please," I sigh, leaning back even further in hopes of feeling his face against my neck, but he stops at my jawline with a soft little nose-nudge and slowly lifts his head.

"Tomorrow soon enough?" he asks raggedly.

"Mmm," I consider, because I'd want the promised sweet tonight if it didn't mean losing the shelter of Peeta's warm bulk enclosing my body. I could help him with all the chopping and probably secure myself a seat on the worktop, holding the mixing bowl, but I like my current seat much better. "Tomorrow sounds fine," I concede.

The very last pie is pure magic: a thick spongy white layer, at once fluffy and crisp, with sweet-tart yellow creaminess beneath. " _Oh!_ " I cry around the spoon in my mouth, sitting up with a start to more closely examine the jar. "What _is_ this?" I breathe, turning to look up at Peeta with wide eyes.

"Lemon meringue," he says, and when no recognition crosses my face he adds, "Sort of like orange curd, only made with lemons."

I've never tasted a lemon before, though I've seen them at the grocer's, guarded like gold at the top of the fruit display. They're rarer and even costlier than oranges; a tear-shaped yellow sun, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

"I've never tasted anything like this," I tell him, demonstratively scooping out a little more of the sunny custard before licking the spoon clean with a rapturous sigh. "I love it."

He frowns slightly, as though something I've said doesn't quite add up. "But…you've had lemonade before?" he says. "Lemon drops from the sweet-shop?"

The closest I've come to lemon drops is seeing them in a pretty springtime window display, and lemonade might as well be liquid gold. The wealthiest Merchant girls serve it at summer toastings, sometimes with sprigs of fresh mint that I bring back from the woods, but I've never been given so much as a sip of the frosty yellow liquid in trade.

I shake my head. "Mom used lemon juice in medicines, I think – or maybe lemon oil? – back in her parent's shop," I reply. "And Granny Ashpet once paid a small fortune for five lemon drops to send with Grandpa Asa into the mines, so he could taste the sunshine during his darkest hours underground. Oh, and Marko brought my family a lemon cake that first day after I left with you," I recall. "But no, I've never had lemon anything before now."

It's a simple enough admission and, I would think, neither unexpected nor especially sad, but Peeta stares at me with heartbroken eyes, as though I've just told him I've never seen the sun.

"I'll make you lemon _everything_ , Katniss," he says fervently. "Pollux will bring us a whole crate of lemons tomorrow night and then it'll be lemonade, lemon cake, lemon pie, lemon shortbread, ginger cake with lemon curd – there are soups, even, that use lemon," he explains in a giddy rush. "Savory ones, of course, not sweet, but the lemon makes them acidic –"

"Okay," I say with a happy, if slightly confused, little laugh. "Why the sudden interest in lemon?"

"I think my sweetheart might love it," he answers softly, brushing my cheek with a fingertip.

My heart sinks, but only a little and only for a moment. "That's likely," I tell him with just a pinch of false brightness. "She's probably never had lemon before either, so you could try out her recipes on me."

"Actually, I'd like to start planning for my toasting cake," he says quietly. "Maybe lemon, maybe something else, but I'd really love your opinion."

"Mine?" I puzzle to cover up the riot of fear and nausea that the prospect of Peeta's imminent wedding incites in my gut. I frantically remind myself that he said _planning_ _for_ the cake as opposed to the more immediate _planning_ the cake, but his potential wedding is still much too close for my comfort. "Why would you want my opinion on your wedding cake?"

"Well," he says equably, "you _are_ the most important person in my life right now, Katniss. It would be foolish – unforgivable, really – for me to make any serious decisions or plans for the future without consulting you."

Soothed by his sweetness, I rest a hand on his and tangle our fingers against his knee. "Does that include telling me before you propose to your sweetheart?" I ask.

He chuckles wryly. "I told you, my sweetheart is a dream," he says, "and I have no plans to rush things and ask her to marry me anytime soon. But when – _if_ – it ever happens," he assures me with a strange smile, "I expect you'll know immediately."

My panic momentarily averted, I settle back against him, our fingers still entwined, and contemplate the jumble of dirty jam jars currently littering the table like the aftermath of a glutton's orgy. "Marko's not married, is he?" I wonder idly. "Or promised to anyone?"

Peeta stiffens behind me. "I beg your pardon?" he says lightly, but I catch an edge of concern in his tone and pounce on it like Buttercup on a hapless field mouse.

"With pies like these," I muse, shaking my head. "He's so big and strong – and quite nice-looking too, now that I think of it…and he'll own the bakery someday, right?"

"I knew it!" Peeta cries, sitting up straight and turning me sideways to face him. His cheeks are bright and he's clearly having trouble holding back a smile, but there's a flicker of real worry in his eyes. "I _knew_ you were sweet on someone and here it is: my own _brother_ – the pieman!" he exclaims. "I should have guessed! A New Year's gift of twelve tiny pies – and I just _spoon-fed_ them to you!

"Well, nothing doing, Katniss," he storms on through twitching lips. "You're going to stay right here in the middle of nowhere and bring me fat rabbits and turkeys and squirrels for the rest of your days. Do you hear me, woman?"

I try to hold in my laughter because it's clear that somewhere behind all of this playful blustering, Peeta's fostering some genuine – albeit misguided and thoroughly ridiculous – fear that I might actually want to leave him for his brawny pieman brother, but it's no use. I take one look at his flustered face and burst into a fit of helpless giggles.

"Nope," I inform him mirthfully. "I'm all about luxury and leisure and only your brother can give me that. So from now on you can hunt and skin your own –"

I break off with a sharp whuff of breath as he pushes me backward onto the sofa and pounces on top of me in a playful tackle. "Luxury and leisure?" he echoes in appalled disbelief, his mouth a few scant inches above mine; so close that I feel the moist heat of his breath on my laughing lips. "I made you a bath of cream and honey, I wrap you in furs, I…"

He trails off, his eyes drifting down toward my chest, and runs his fingertips along the chain of my moon-pearl necklace, as soft and careful as a whisper. "I hung the moon around your neck," he says, and it's meant to be another exasperated exclamation but the words come out in a startlingly vulnerable rasp. "And you want Marko and mini pies?"

I want to kiss him. I _should_ kiss him. His mouth is so close that I could meet it with the slightest tilt of my head, and the strange grief in his voice and his eyes cries out for the comfort and assurance of a lover's lips.

But I'm not his lover and never will be. This is a play-fight, nothing more, and any sadness in Peeta's manner stems back to his sweetheart: a girl who, I realize suddenly, might very well turn down this paradise in the woods for the snug stability of a shop on the square, a steady income, and a warm bed over the bakery, shared by a husband with two strong legs.

"No," I whisper. "I don't want Marko or the bakery or any of that. I only ever want you."

A soft sob-like sound spills from his throat and he sinks over me, pressing his cheek against mine with a quiet moan. My thighs splayed to cradle his hips when he pushed me onto my back and now I edge them a little wider so I can curl my knees around him, holding him – comforting him – as best I can. His body is firm and heavy and warm as a stove and I think I could lie like this for the rest of my days, covered by my sweet, sorrowful boy and drinking in his scent of honeyed spices and musk and cream.

"Well, good," he says at last, his lips brushing the curve of my ear and triggering an exquisite shiver between my shoulder blades. "I'd be a terrible hunter, and I love all your wild gifts."

He leans up to meet my eyes, his face cheerful and teasing once more. "And we'll have no more talk of huntresses moving to town to marry my burly oaf of a brother," he orders, but so merrily that I pull him back down and twine all four of my limbs around his body, rocking him a little as I squeeze him with all my might.

"None whatsoever," I promise ardently.

He melts into my embrace with a groan of deep and utter contentment, settling his weight over me for a few more delicious heartbeats, but the moment I loosen my hold he moves off me and helps me to sit up, his cheeks even ruddier than before. I feel like a perfect idiot for clinging to him like that, but far from being upset, he's smiling like it's the best day of his life.

"I'm really not interested in Marko, you know," I assure him, just in case my whispered response didn't make it clear. "I was just wondering how in the world he isn't already spoken for."

"Who says he isn't?" Peeta replies, wiggling his brows in an impish fashion.

My own brows fly up in surprise. Peeta talks about his brothers on a regular basis, especially whenever he gets a letter from town, and while Luka's flirtatious nature and string of giggling admirers are regular topics, I've never heard a peep about Marko especially liking or being liked by any girl. If he's found a sweetheart, this is news indeed. "Is he?" I ask.

Peeta tips his head a little, neither a shake nor a nod. "He's got a sweetheart," he says at last, "but he's going to have to wait a bit for her."

"Is she waiting for him to inherit the bakery?" I tease. "Your dad's pretty hale, last I knew."

"No…I'm not sure she even knows that he wants her," he admits. "And if she did, she might rather have someone a little younger or, well… _flashier,_ " he says with a shrug. "Marko's the kindest, strongest, steadiest man you'll ever meet, but he's not exactly an exciting match."

"I don't know," I pretend to ponder, nodding toward the heap of empty jam jars. "Those pies were awfully exciting."

"Oh hush," Peeta retorts, but his lips are already sprawling into a grin. "Would you prefer a new kind of pie each day instead of a cake, greedy gosling?"

I seriously consider this for about five seconds, recalling the delicious pies and tarts that Peeta's already made for me and the prospect of _dozens_ of brand-new varieties. "No," I decide. "Greedy goslings prefer cake. Easier to peck up with your bill."

"Good," he declares, visibly relieved. "I can bake a decent enough pie, but now that you've tried all of these –" he waves at the jam jars – "I'd be better off not bothering."

"That's nonsense and you know it," I chide, seriously this time. "I love every crumb of your pies and would take the least of them over the best that your brother could offer. I just…" I trail off and spread my hands, a little helplessly. "I can't imagine any girl hesitating when they could have –" I gesture meaningfully at the jars. "All this and a bakery to put it in," I conclude.

I know this remark is ridiculous before I say it and am unsurprised when Peeta chuckles in reply. "It's all right, Katniss," he says. "We Mellarks are experts at waiting. We fall in love early and wait decades for our sweethearts to catch up, and even then they don't always want us."

"But occasionally someone succeeds and gets married," I point out, "or you wouldn't be here to tell the tale."

"Entirely true," he agrees with a smile. "If by 'the tale' you mean the history of Mellark weddings, which, if memory serves, I promised to tell you tonight."

I echo his smile, inwardly thrilled by his recollection. "You did indeed," I reply, and tuck myself into the corner of my side of the sofa, tugging up the blanket to cover my folded legs.

Peeta settles into his own corner, propping his back against the arm of the sofa, and begins:

"There's a tradition in my family, centuries old; a beautiful heritage shared by all Mellark wives and daughters, but one you may never have noticed before. When a girl marries into the family – or is born into it – she braids her hair in a special fashion: two broad coils, one on either side of her head.

"May I?" he asks shyly, leaning forward a little, and I scoot out of my corner to meet him.

He takes my left braid in both strong hands and gently curls it into a loose coil that covers most of the side of my head. "Like so," he says, a little breathlessly, cradling the coil in place, and I realize I've been holding my breath ever since he took hold of my braid.

He unwinds the coil as gently as he shaped it and leans away from me, and I can breathe again. But he doesn't move back to his respective corner and neither do I. "It's nothing too fancy," he goes on, "not on a daily basis, anyway. No one's quite sure how it started, but Grandma Lydda said it was all about keeping your braids out of the batter." He grins at the memory.

"A Mellark daughter might wear the braid-coils as soon as her hair was long enough to shape them, but it was an absolute must once she came of age." He blushes faintly. "Once she could have children," he clarifies. "Centuries ago, a young unmarried Mellark woman who wore the braid-coils was presenting herself as an able – and available – wife."

"For a Mellark bride, it was a more formal matter," he goes on. "Before the wedding she could style her hair however she liked or as her own family traditions dictated, but during the marriage ceremony the groom's mother or grandmother would brush the bride's hair thoroughly, plait it into two long braids and shape it into the coils as a demonstration of her new family heritage, and she would wear it like that ever after.

"In ancient days it was a beautiful, elaborate ritual, part of a lengthy ceremony," he explains. "The bride's mother or sisters would dress her hair in their own family style and present her thus to the groom: the very picture of their heritage. At a special point in the ceremony the groom would take her hair down and brush it out, as a symbol of the girl leaving her family behind and of…of the intimacy of their union," he says, his voice catching slightly. "Then he brought her to the women of his family – his mother, grandmother, and sisters – who would braid and wind her hair in the Mellark style – "bridal braids" they were called in that context, or sometimes the "bride-coils" – and adorn it festively with colorful ribbons and fragrant blossoms, sometimes gold or silver ornaments or even jewels."

It sounds like nothing so much as a fairy tale, rich with magic and treasure and romance, and I sigh deeply, enraptured by the magnificent images Peeta's painting with his words.

"A girl's bridal hairpins – the pins that secured her braids in the bride-coils on her wedding day – took on a special significance," he continues. "It became commonplace for a Mellark boy to propose to his sweetheart with hairpins, as silly as it sounds, then save up his earnings during their first year of marriage and present his wife with a ring on the first anniversary of their wedding day."

"That doesn't sounds silly at all," I tell him. "Seam couples are lucky if they can _ever_ afford to buy wedding rings, even ten years down the road, and more often than not they get sold back to the mercantile or traded to buy food or fuel for the fires. These bridal hairpins sound both practical and pretty."

"They were," he agrees with a soft smile. "A very poor Mellark boy _could_ propose with the plain black ten-penny sort of hairpins – there was no rule that said they needed to be fine or costly – but he would be ashamed to do so. Bridal hairpins were a symbol of his love and esteem for his sweetheart, and as a result he would seek out the finest ones he could afford.

"The obvious sorts of traditions sprung up as a result," he explains. "The eldest son might give his bride pins of pure gold or ones bedecked with tiny jewels while the second son would present silver pins, and so forth. The youngest son –" He colors slightly. "The youngest son traditionally presented the least expensive and elaborate pins, but that didn't make them plain or even necessarily cheap. They might be embellished with little silk flowers, for instance, or maybe feathers or beads.

"Grandma Lydda's bridal hairpins were an ancient, weathered gold, and three of them had tiny chips of real diamond," he says, a little dreamily. "Marko's wife will wear them one day." He winks at that and I roll my eyes in reply.

"I'd rather have beads or feathers or flowers," I tell him and am surprised to see a slow smile spill across his face like a sunrise. "Grandpa Asa decorated ten-penny hair clips with feathers and evergreen sprigs as courting gifts for Granny Ashpet," I explain, "which I know isn't the same thing at all, but it sounds a lot…well, _sweeter,_ " I admit, "than old gold and tiny diamonds."

"Flowered hairpins aren't so bad," he agrees. "And there were always plenty of other adornments to bedeck her bridal braids on the wedding day: ribbons, fresh flowers; even jewels if the groom was wealthy enough.

"Of course, things changed in the Dark Days," he goes on. "Bridal braid adornments were reduced to the barest minimum. In a bad year, a pair of ribbons or a handful of wildflowers might be the only jewels a Mellark bride wore on her wedding day, and the ceremony was slowly whittled down till it only included a short section where the bride's hair was braided and coiled by the women of her new husband's family.

"In the Dark Days, and after, families got smaller," he says, simply but not without sadness. "More babies died, and more wives were afraid or unable to have them. Children didn't always outlive their parents, and about fifty years ago it became painfully clear that there might not always be a woman left in the groom's family to perform the braiding ceremony."

I consider this for a heartbreaking moment. Peeta's beloved grandmother is dead and his father only has one bachelor brother, which means that the only Mellark woman alive at the moment is Peeta's bitter mother, and a woman less likely to braid her daughter-in-law's hair I can't imagine. I haven't paid a great deal of attention to Mrs. Mellark over the years, except to avoid her, but I don't recall ever seeing her hair braided in the way Peeta's described – which means that the tradition has been lost forever.

"I'm so sorry, Peeta," I soothe, reaching forward to take his hand. This sweet boy with his love of tales deserved a magical marriage ceremony of ribbons and flowers – and yes, jewels – and it's nothing short of tragic that his family's beautiful braiding ritual has been lost to time.

He curls his hand around mine and leans forward a little. "What for?" he wonders.

I suppose he's come to terms with it long ago, but that makes the situation no less heart-rending. "For the loss of the braiding ceremony," I reply, as gently as I can. "There – there aren't any Mellark women to do it anymore, you said."

"No, there aren't," he agrees with a strange smile. "Mellarks have an unfortunate propensity for fathering patient sons, and their longsuffering mothers don't always survive till the wedding day…which is why, starting with Grandpa Marko, mothers taught their sons how to plait the bridal braids."

My mouth drops open and I promptly lose all ability to breathe.

It's not such an impossible thing nor even unlikely, really. My father often braided my hair and Prim's, and not because my mother was too busy or too tired to do it herself. It's a skill that most Seam men learn at some point – plaiting a simple braid for their wives and daughters – and many will do it without protest or hesitation. Life is especially harsh and fragile in the Seam, and the practical man learns to mother his children in anticipation of a day when his wife is no longer there to fill the role herself.

But what Peeta's suggesting is something much more elaborate and intimate: a marriage ritual requiring hands that are deft, patient, and steady – all qualities, I realize, that describe a baker's son.

I imagine Peeta's strong fingers moving gently but purposefully through my hair, plaiting and winding and pinning, and shiver with hopeless anticipation for yet another pleasure that I will never, ever have. "You know how to plait the bridal braids?" I croak.

His smile softens. "Yes, I do," he says. "I can show you, if you want."

I shake my head, not at his offer – a suggestion that makes my belly tighten and my scalp tingle and my very being cry out with longing – but at one cold fact that makes what he said utterly impossible. "But your mother would never have taught you that," I protest, my voice trembling because, as completely impossible as it is that Peeta could have learned this skill, I wish with all my might that it were true. "I've never seen her hair braided in coils and wouldn't be surprised if she never learned how, and –"

"You're right," he agrees. "She'd never do such a thing, except maybe for Luka. Grandma Lydda taught Mom the bridal braids in her turn, of course, but she hasn't worn her hair like that since before I was born."

Peeta doesn't talk much about his parent's marriage, but I've gathered that the little that was good about it crumbled after his birth. The moment when everything should have been golden and perfect and spilling over with love and joy.

I picture him as a baby, pink and sweet and _so_ small, his wet blue eyes wide with hope as he gazes at the woman who should treasure him above everything else in the world, and I'm up on my knees in an instant, closing the distance between us to cup his curly head in both hands. "I'm sorry, Peeta," I murmur, rubbing my forehead against his. "Your mother is a terrible woman."

"Yes, in a lot of ways she is," he replies, and he sounds almost amused.

I lean back in surprise, my eyes narrowed, to find him practically grinning. "I can't say that I'm fine with it," he adds, "but at the moment it feels like another life, you know?"

I cock my head like a bird's, unsure what he's trying to tell me, and he laughs. "So: you don't have to try to make me feel better," he explains. "I mean – you can if you want," he blurts, blushing a little. "It's nice – _so_ nice – when you do, but you don't have to –"

I'm in his lap before I'm aware that I've moved, my knees on either side of his hips and both arms snug around his neck. _My boy,_ I croon silently as I cradle his sweet face against my throat. Never mind if he's forgiven his awful mother or come to terms with her open dislike and neglect: this boy – the most precious thing in the world – has clearly never been cherished, nor received a fraction of the love and tenderness he deserves. The very least I can do is hug him at the slightest echo of a bad memory.

"That's nice too," he sighs, curling his arms around my waist and stroking my back with one strong hand, and the movement of his mouth against my neck makes me gasp. Our pose is startlingly intimate and yet I feel a fierce compulsion to make it even more so; to wrap my legs around his waist and complete the embrace. My backside rests on his thighs but that doesn't feel close enough: I want to hitch forward another inch and feel his belly against mine, to root the warm hollow at the juncture of my thighs against the rise at the juncture of his. It's a hungry, primal urge and I don't understand it at all, but it doesn't frighten me like feeling his tongue against my fingers did yesterday. This feels strangely good and right and _complete_ , as though if I hooked my legs around his waist everything in the universe would fall softly and silently into place.

But none of this, neither falling universes nor that lush feeling of _completion_ , is meant for me, and so I loosen my hold and push at his shoulders, eager to scoot away to safety, but Peeta's arms lie across my back like steel bands and I can do little more than rock in place. "Shh, little songbird," he soothes, his mouth soft and warm against my throat as his fingers trail up and down my ribs. "You can keep this perch for as long as you want. Even nest here, if you like."

I shudder and sink against him. What he's suggesting is exactly what I want, maybe the only thing I want in all the world at this moment, but he doesn't understand and I have to move away before he can. He correctly guessed that I pull away from him out of fear of being hurt, and this moment is no exception. As sweet and kind and patient as he may be, if Peeta knew that I carry a lover's longings for him and ache with them as I twine myself around his body, he would be disgusted and furious and maybe even hurt. We're friends – maybe closer than friends – but our relationship would never survive something as appalling as that.

"My-my leg hurts," I lie frantically, and he lets me go at once. I clamber off his lap and scurry back to huddle in my heap of blanket in the opposite corner of the sofa: a vixen in her den once more, content to peek out at her beloved from a safe distance.

Peeta watches me from his own side of the sofa, his eyes sad and apologetic and even a little shamed. "I'm so sorry, Katniss," he says quietly. "I forgot that you can't hold onto a wild thing forever, even after it's tamed."

His words recall my childish longing for just one more finger-stroke over powdery feathers or a downy belly, maybe even a kiss to close a pair of bead-black eyes, and I realize that the embrace I fled so frantically was entirely my own doing. Peeta assured me he was fine, that he didn't need comforting, and I crawled into his lap like a greedy pup and made myself at home in his warmth anyway.

No wonder he looks so sad. I offered him kindness and immediately whisked it away when it ceased to be comfortable for me.

I creep a hand out of my blanket cocoon to brush his fingertips; the equivalent of a cautious whisker-nuzzle and a feeble apology at best, but he smiles and turns his hand beneath mine, stroking my fingertips with his thumb. "This is more than enough, you know," he assures me softly. "It feels so good to hold you, but I never really expected that."

This remark only puzzles me for a moment. Peeta's not accustomed to being touched, after all, and the comfort in even the briefest hug can be profound. If I could bring him even a fraction of the pleasure that his touch brings me, I think I could mend every hurt he's ever suffered in one fell swoop.

I resolve to hug him again, not immediately – I think I might burst – but as soon afterward as possible. "You know how to plait bridal braids," I remind him shyly. "Tell me how that's possible."

He curls his hand more firmly around mine and sits forward, blue eyes twinkling in full storyteller mode. "Well," he begins, clearly savoring the suspense. "We have to go back to Grandpa Marko. This was shortly after the Dark Days, and his mother found herself the last Mellark woman in District Twelve – maybe the last in the world," he says. "She'd suffered two stillbirths and three miscarriages with only one – thankfully strong and healthy – surviving child to show for it, and when her son was six years old, her husband died. She was a strong woman – a lot like Grandma Lydda, actually," he says with a chuckle, "which is probably why Grandpa Marko fell so hard for her, just a few years down the road. Anyway, she brought on workers to help run the bakery, neighbors' youngest children and such, who wouldn't mind that they didn't have a lasting share in the business, so long as there was bread on their table and a coin or two to spare. But she couldn't simply create more Mellark women.

"She could've remarried, of course, but Mellarks tend to mate for life," he goes on with a crooked smile. "Without our sweethearts we're like a pond of lonely geese – or ganders, I suppose – and even if Great-Grandma Tanni had found another husband and tried for more children, they wouldn't have been Mellarks, and the tradition was all about the family's heritage, preserved and passed down through a braiding ceremony.

"So she took a long look at her son – a tubby, dreamy, hopelessly ham-handed child, albeit earnest and hard-working – and made up her mind: she would teach him, the very last Mellark, to plait the bridal braids himself. If she survived till his wedding she would perform the bridal braids and teach his new wife the style as soon as could be managed, and if she died before he found a wife – which, considering Grandpa Marko at six, was a definite possibility – her son could do the braiding himself and pass it on to his wife and future daughters.

"It was a wise decision indeed," Peeta remarks. "There would always be a little of the clumsy, chubby child about Grandpa Marko, but working every day in the bakery and wrestling in school – and of course, his genuine good nature – finally won him Grandma Lydda, a radiant beauty by all accounts, for his bride. Great-Grandma Tanni lived to perform the bridal braids and was able to teach them to Grandma Lydda in her turn, but she died just six months later, shortly after Grandma Lydda revealed she was pregnant – with my dad, as it happened," he says with a chuckle. "Which would probably have made Great-Grandma Tanni throw up her hands and die of despair on the spot, had she known. She wanted a little girl so badly, and so did Grandma Lydda."

"And so did your dad?" I venture gently, and Peeta flashes me a look so full of sorrow that it momentarily stops my heart.

"Yes," he says. "But Mom wanted a daughter even more, and both of them expected me to be a girl."

"Oh, _Peeta_ …" I whisper, squeezing his hand, but there's more to come.

"She, um…I don't exactly know what happened, but Mom always said it was my fault that she didn't have a daughter," he says hoarsely. "So…I think something went wrong when I was born, or after, that meant she couldn't get pregnant again."

"I think it's likelier that your dad never wanted to sleep with her again," I retort, furious with this terrible woman for blaming her lack of a daughter on her innocent little son, and inch over to prop my shoulder against Peeta's.

"It's okay," he tells me, but he hunkers down a little to lean against my shoulder, accepting the comfort offered. "It's sort of become the curse of the Mellarks: three generations of nothing but strapping, healthy sons. Which is funny, because from an outside standpoint it's a fantastic thing, and a couple hundred years ago it would've looked like a string of unimaginable luck. A legacy of sons to carry on the trade, not a string of daughters to give away into other families.

"Anyway, all those Mellark boys needed brides and those brides needed braids," he goes on. "And so as soon as Dad and Uncle Marek were old enough to knead, Grandma Lydda took them aside, brushed out her long hair – "a stream of sunlight," Grandpa Marko called it and "a river of moonlight" when spun silver replaced the gold – and taught them how to plait the bridal braids. They were as clumsy and impatient as you might imagine, so there was some clear bribery involved," he confides with a grin. "It became a weekly ritual: Sunday nights after supper they practiced braiding with their mother in exchange for a special piece of frosted shortbread. Grandpa Marko often sat in to observe and correct them if needed, since he had learned the bridal braids long before his wife and practiced them for many years, and sometimes Grandma Lydda would plait braid-coils on–"

He breaks off abruptly, but he doesn't look especially embarrassed or upset. "On who?" I wonder, amused by his hesitance, and nudge his shoulder playfully with mine. "Her husband? Your dad? Did she make all the Mellarks grow a mane of yellow curls so she had someone to practice on too?"

Peeta smiles at these suggestions but shakes his head. He bites his lips together for a long moment, as though debating his reply, and finally says, "Lyssa Ebberfeld, the apothecary's little daughter. Dad's best friend since – well, since she was born. Her mom and Grandma Lydda were cousins of some sort, and she lived right next door –"

And then it clicks in my mind and I understand why he was reluctant to say, and why his eventual answer was so roundabout. "My mom?" I interrupt quietly, but I know the answer already.

No one's ever called my mother "Lyssa": not our Seam neighbors, not even Hazelle Hawthorne, and certainly not my father. It makes sense as a diminutive for "Alyssum," I suppose, but it's startling to hear Peeta refer to my mother by a nickname I've never even heard before.

"Why?" I ask, and my mouth feels like it's been stuffed with cotton. "Why would your grandmother plait bridal braids on my mom when she was a little girl?"

Peeta looses a long shallow breath and stares down at his lap. "She was like the daughter Grandma Lydda always wanted and never had," he says evenly. "Her own little snow maiden, all frost-pale hair and blue-button eyes and a red ribbon mouth. In that context they were just braid-coils, not bridal braids."

"And?" I prompt, because I know that's only half of the story and I want the whole of it, no matter how upsetting it might be.

He turns to look at me, his eyes soft and grave. "They were always meant to be together, Katniss," he says gently. "From…well, from the moment they both existed. The day your mother was born your grandma Violet laid her beside my dad in his crib, and that was that. They shared a basket near the ovens while Grandma Lydda was baking and a little cot in your grandma's stillroom when it was her turn to watch them.

"Their mothers were closer than sisters," he explains. "They shared nursing duties, even, so one of them could keep working while the other fed the babies. In some societies that's as good as kinship," he ventures delicately, but this is the least of my concerns.

It's a little unsettling to think of my mother and Peeta's father being nursed by the same woman – his grandmother and my own in turns – but it's hardly a new practice, nor even an unusual one. Seam women nurse each other's babies all the time because of poor – or excessive – milk production, sickness or death of the mother or, more often these days than not, because the new mother has to go straight back to work, sometimes even in the mines, as soon as her baby's been delivered. Sometimes the substitute nurse is dubbed "Auntie" by the child afterward but it's a term of endearment only, nothing more binding, and stems from a purely practical arrangement.

What bothers me more is the notion that my mother was intended for Peeta's father from the moment she was born. My Seam-born father, besotted with Lydda Mellark's precious snow maiden, never even stood a chance. "That's well enough," I say, "but why didn't she have a choice in the matter? If she was always meant for your dad, why did she run away to marry mine?"

Peeta sighs, heavily and deep. "When she was a child, I honestly don't think the braids meant anything, except maybe that she was as close as kin to the Mellarks," he says. "An honorary daughter, if you will. But when she got older she plaited them herself, with red ribbons and apple blossoms woven in, and wore them more often than not."

I swallow my second _why_ because I know the answer that will result – red ribbons would have been more than enough proof, but I know all too well where those apple blossoms came from – but Peeta rests a hand on mine and gives the answer anyway. "Because she loved him, Katniss," he says, simply and so gently. "At least for a little while, and up till their last Reaping she was planning – she _wanted_ – to marry him. But something happened and she chose your dad instead, who clearly adored her with all of his being."

I shake my head slightly; processing this only, not denying it, and Peeta adds, "I can only imagine how jarring this must be to hear, and I'm sorry for launching it at you in the middle of what should have been a pleasant little tale."

"No," I assure him. "You didn't. It's clearly part of your story and –" I tip my head from side to side, weighing my words for truthfulness before conceding, "I think I would have wanted to know – especially since it sounds like my mom was the last girl to truly wear the braid-coils?"

He nods, with a smile of evident relief at my reaction. "Grandma Lydda plaited my mom's hair in bridal braids during the toasting," he replies. "She wore them now and again during their first year of marriage and again after Luka was born, when –"

He breaks off with a blush. "They had a bit of a honeymoon after Luka," he says dryly, "which is why we're just over a year apart. Anyway, after I came along Mom decided she wasn't interested in Mellark braid-coils anymore and hasn't worn them since."

He hesitates for a weighty moment. "I used to think she didn't want to be part of the family anymore," he says finally, "thumbing her nose at our tradition and all, but lately I've been wondering if it wasn't more to do with the daughter she never had."

I raise my brows in curiosity and he explains: "Suppose you'd just had your third son – a boy you didn't want; a boy you had been absolutely _certain_ would be a girl – and then you found out that you could never have another baby. You would never have the daughter you wanted with all your heart, the little girl you were supposed to plait the special braid-coils for and teach to braid them in her turn." He strokes the back of my hand with his thumb but it's an absent gesture, as though he's a thousand miles away. "Don't you suppose the last thing you would ever want to do again is plait braid-coils?" he wonders quietly.

I turn his hand beneath mine and stroke his palm with a curl of my fingertips. I don't want to think about what he said; don't want any reason to excuse his mother's behavior, let alone pity her, but grief over children can be a crippling thing. I've never, _ever_ wanted children, never wanted to bring new lives into a world dominated by the Capitol and its cruel Games, but after just one short month of living with Peeta I dreamt myself pregnant with twin fawns and was almost inconsolable when I woke to find they weren't real.

As harsh and hopeless as Seam life is, I've seen Seamwives driven out of their minds by infertility or birthing complications that leave them unable to carry another child. Is it really so unbelievable that Peeta's mother – a woman who was clearly her husband's second choice and possibly never loved by him – could be pushed to the brink by a similar loss? It doesn't excuse anything she's done – and never, _ever_ will – but it makes a little more sense of her behavior.

"I can see that," I tell him at last. "I can see why she would never want to plait the braids again – or teach her sons how to do them."

He interlaces our fingers palm-to-palm and gives me the ghost of a smile. "Like I said, she'd probably do it for Luka," he reminds me. "And Luka's got about as much chance of winning his sweetheart as I have of marrying the moon. But in the event that he somehow managed to get her through the door –" his smile broadens to a wide, crooked grin at this prospect – "I think Mom would fall over her own feet to give the girl bridal braids."

"Luka has a sweetheart too?" I demand, straightening in my seat with a frown. "As in singular, one girl, jewel of his heart, and all the rest? How do I not know this?"

I'm starting to wonder what else Prim hasn't been telling me since I moved out here.

To my surprise Peeta laughs as though this is the best joke he's heard all year. "He does and he doesn't," he replies at last. "He's the best-looking of all of us and he's an incorrigible flirt, so he'll always have a flock of girls tittering over him and offering ribbons and kisses and the rest. But he's smitten with someone, as utterly and completely as the rest of us, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that he sent away the latest batch of New Year's admirers still burdened with both their ribbons and their kisses."

I consider the little I remember of Luka Mellark, paired with the sketches Peeta's made of him over the past month. While I can't see anyone rivaling my boy in handsomeness, Luka _is_ rather striking. His curls are tawny rather than pale like his brothers' and his features are almost girlishly fine, with the sort of startling dark eyebrows that give fair-haired men a wicked look.

He's lean and sinewy where his brothers are stocky and solid with muscle, but that didn't stop him pinning Peeta in the wrestling tournament last year, a victory that made him champion wrestler of our whole school.

A victory that has never sat right with me, especially now that I love his defeated opponent.

I wonder if I loved Peeta then, when I peered over a classmate's shoulder with a dismayed gasp to watch Luka drive his back into the mat.

"So your best-looking brother," I wonder, "champion wrestler in our school and the charming second son of a successful baker, can't manage to win his sweetheart either? Who turns down a prospect like that?"

Peeta smiles at this but his previous humor is gone. "Someone who has absolutely no idea that he exists," he replies, and there's a quiet grief in his voice; a resignation that wasn't there when he told me about Marko's girl nor even when he talked about the impossibility of winning his own sweetheart.

I shake my head in incomprehension. "Twelve's not that big," I say. "I mean, even _I_ knew of Luka from that wrestling tournament and I couldn't be farther removed from his social circle, or from Merchant life in general. Who _is_ his sweetheart, a wood sprite?"

For some reason this suggestion wins a chuckle and a crooked, if merrier, smile. " _That,_ my dear, is a very interesting story," Peeta replies. "And it's not really mine to tell, but I'll see about dropping you a hint sometime.

"In the meantime, we're nearing the end of our tale, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the part you're most curious about," he teases. "If I may?"

I sweep my left hand in a cordial gesture – my right still being securely entwined with his – and he continues, "There's not a whole lot left to tell, really. Obviously, Mom was never going to teach us how to plait the bridal braids nor, likelier than not, would she offer to do them for our future wives, so it was imperative that we all learn while Grandma Lydda was alive and well. She was living with Uncle Marek over the shoe shop then, and Marko and I would go over there after school for cookies and tea and braiding practice. She had such beautiful hair, even then," he reminisces. "Silver had replaced both the gold and the curls, but it really _was_ like a river of moonlight."

"Just you and Marko," I wonder quietly. "No Luka?"

"No Luka," he confirms. "He was really young at the time and more interested in toys and games and sweets than in learning to braid his future wife's hair, and being Mom's favorite, he wasn't forced to take part in something she didn't particularly care for."

"And now?" I wonder, thinking of Luka's mysterious sweetheart. "Now that there's a girl in the picture, does he wish he'd made the effort as a child?"

Peeta nods solemnly. "Oh yes. He started asking us about it a few winters ago – when he really started noticing girls, I thought – and this past summer –" He breaks off, much like when he was about to mention my mother, and I frown.

"What happened this summer?" I wonder pointedly. "Did he fall in love with Prim?"

He laughs at this but it's a tight, stilted sound. "No," he assures me. "He – his sweetheart became a little more _real_ ," he says, "if no more attainable, and then he really began to regret his ignorance of bridal braids. There's something exquisitely romantic about the prospect of braiding your wife's hair," he says huskily, reaching up to stroke the beribboned tail of my left braid.

"But…but _you_ didn't mind?" I croak, aching to tip my head and rub my cheek against the strong hand lingering at my shoulder. "I-I mean, you would have been a year younger than Luka, with plenty of your own distractions."

"I was a very determined and passionate five," he reveals, looking up from my braid with a radiant smile. "I'd fallen in love, you see, and was ready then and there to be a husband."

This time I laugh, envisioning chubby five-year-old Peeta in the throes of what he was certain was true love. "In love?" I echo teasingly. "With what lucky girl?"

"The only one I've ever loved," he answers simply, releasing my braid and sitting back. "My sweetheart. I saw her on the first day of school and that was it: I was a goner, through and through."

I recall the night Peeta told me about his father pointing me out on our first day of school, by way of identifying my mother, and wonder bitterly why that chubby little boy couldn't have fallen in love with me instead. At five years of age, surely one small Seam girl is just like any other.

I want to ask what made her stand out, this oblivious girl who won Peeta's golden heart when she was the merest child, and decide I don't want to know. "So you didn't mind learning the bridal braids so young?" I ask, not really caring whether he replies or not. "You were that eager to marry your sweetheart?"

"I was choosing hairpins at the mercantile by week's end," he replies with a soft smile, reaching up to curl the tail of my right braid around his finger. "Fortunately, my dad didn't think I was crazy. He took me straight to Grandma Lydda and my braiding lessons began that very same day."

I wonder if Peeta's oblivious sweetheart has any idea that he's been laboring for her for almost eleven years. I wonder if she'll even care when she finds out.

If it was me he'd loved all this while, me for whom those bridal hairpins were intended and me for whom that five-year-old Merchant boy gave up his afternoon playtime, just so he could braid my hair in coils at our toasting, I would tackle Peeta on the sofa here and now and trap his torso between my knees while I smothered him with happy kisses.

But of course it isn't me that he loves, let alone me for whom he labored as a child, and indulging in these heady, foolish fantasies will only make it hurt more when he finally courts and marries his sweetheart. I envision the pair of them kneeling in front of this very hearth with bread and honey and wine; Peeta's strong hands deftly braiding his bride's hair into two thick, silky plaits then winding and shaping and pinning them carefully in broad black coils on either side of her pretty head, and I have to close my eyes to fight the nausea and heartache.

He wants the moon, I recall bitterly. I wonder if this rich young man will accordingly set his moon-bride's braids with pearls – surely he could buy a dozen more like the one around my neck, only larger and finer, without batting an eye – or even diamonds.

"You have all the money in the world now," I remind him faintly, forcing my eyes open and chasing a weak smile across my lips. "Do you mean to set your bride's hair with jewels?"

"No," he says, to my surprise, very softly, then amends it: "Not unless she wants it, that is. I was thinking more of white flowers and red ribbons."

I catch my breath for a moment at the beauty of this image. _Black hair woven through with white flowers and red ribbons_ – like a princess in a fairy tale.

And then I remember: _katniss_ flowers are white, and Peeta unabashedly loves katniss. He's painted its humble blossoms all over this place: on his sleigh – and probably his pony-cart as well – on the ledge of his bathtub, and his painstakingly detailed sketches still hang above the workbench in his art room, or did, last I knew. It may be my namesake, but he's shown an enthusiasm for depicting it that even a friendly fondness for me couldn't account for. I think of the katniss blossoms sketched on his little notes, frosted over bricks of shortbread, painted on my skis; even embroidered on my breathtaking winter coat.

Maybe it's these past months of living beside the lake, but that's hardly sufficient time to fall head over heels for a water plant; even a beautiful one. If he was besotted with pink-blossomed water lilies I might understand it, but katniss is dominated by lush green arrowheads, slender spikes, and plump nourishing tubers; its tiny white blossoms are edible but otherwise little more than an afterthought.

 _You must really like katniss,_ I'd observed, so casually – and apparently, astutely – on my first day here. Perhaps he means to cut a bowlful of blossoms on his wedding day, an hour's thankless task at the very least, and thread them into his bride's hair before their toasting fire.

 _No,_ I resolve, sick and half-dazed with grief at the very thought. I couldn't bear it: my namesake in that girl's hair, let alone at her toasting, woven into her bridal braids by my boy. In any case, to set a Seam bride's hair with jewels would be a far more generous gesture and one more worthy of Peeta. Just ten or twelve pearls could provide a lifetime of food and comfort for his hollow-eyed, hungry in-laws.

"I don't know about that," I croak, pushing the words past the lump in my throat and fixing my eyes on anything but him. "I-I mean: if you set her black hair with jewels, she'd glitter like a skyful of stars."

"What….w-what makes you think she has black hair?" Peeta rasps. His voice is hoarse, the words edged and breathless and strange.

I look up at him, unsurprised and a little pitying, and consider whether to cup his sad, sweet face in my hands or throttle him, none too gently, by the shoulders. "It's kind of obvious," I reply, and bring a hand to touch the scrap of red cloth at his wrist.

His bright eyes widen in what almost looks like terror, and I wonder what could be so very frightening about me discovering the identity of his sweetheart. I would expect it to be a relief; a secret he didn't have to keep anymore, at least from me. "This is what passes for a sweetheart ribbon in the Seam," I tell him quietly, stroking the faded cotton with a fingertip. "Scraps of red cloth."

His eyes remain wide at this revelation but their expression softens to something halfway between fear and awe – or maybe disbelief. " _Is_ it?" he whispers.

I narrowly substitute a scowl for a snarl, furious with the girl for his sake. Sneaking a ribbon to a would-be sweetheart may be part of the New Year's fun, but the recipient always recognizes the token upon discovery and makes an informed decision as to whether or not to wear it. Peeta probably put it on simply because it was a present from the girl he loved, without the slightest idea of what wearing it would mean for her.

He's been from one end of Panem to the other, veritably proclaiming that he belongs to a Seam girl.

"Didn't she tell you that?" I ask sharply. "Your Seam sweetheart – when she gave it to you?"

He blinks, startled by the question, but just as quickly his shock fades, leaving his features weary with a peculiar mix of heartbreak and relief. "Not a word," he replies with a crooked smile. "Though, to be fair, I don't think that's what she meant by the gift. She certainly didn't expect me to wear it."

"Don't be so sure," I counter, my heart at once numb and sore. Until this moment I'd only guessed that Peeta's sweetheart was a Seam girl but without meaning to, I've just made him confirm it beyond all doubt.

Peeta Mellark well and truly loves a Seam girl and means to plait her black hair with sweetheart ribbons and white flowers – quite possibly my wild namesake's blossoms – on their wedding day.

"Maybe…maybe she _wanted_ you for a sweetheart," I say, a little raggedly. "But…she wasn't brave enough to say so at the time."

It's common for girls, both Merchant and Seam, to be shy – or sly – about giving ribbons to their sweethearts. They'll tie them round a small gift as part of the wrapping, or hide them inside parcels for their boys' families. By the time the ruse is discovered the girl is long gone, hiding her blushes in the shadows and the giggling titters of her closest friends, and one doesn't simply give a sweetheart ribbon back.

It's not all that surprising, really, that Peeta's sweetheart would have resorted to a similar scheme to get her "ribbon" into his hands. After all, for a Seam girl to ask a Merchant's son – let alone Peeta Mellark – to love her would require vast amounts of raw nerve or, at the very least, a bit of subterfuge.

"That would be _wonderful_ , Katniss," he breathes. "But…I really doubt she meant anything of the kind."

I'm still not so sure. The sweetheart ribbon tradition as we know it began before the Dark Days, when New Year's was a time of festive decorations and gifts and feasts, but its origins are much, much older and not restricted to the holiday.

Centuries ago, my father explained, a sweetheart ribbon wasn't a point of pride but a promise; even an oath. District girls get silly and downright ridiculous over receiving a boy's ribbon and may give away their own ribbons to several different boys simply to win kisses, but in those long-ago days, what we now call a sweetheart ribbon was a tangible pledge, given to and worn by only one person.

When a girl gave a boy a red ribbon, especially if she tied it around his arm herself, it meant that she had bound herself to him, and if the boy consented to wear the ribbon, it meant he had dedicated himself to her in turn. Like the fighting men in ancient tales who wore tokens of their sweethearts into battle; like the banner beneath which they fought, but even more significant. The giving and receiving of a red ribbon was once as binding as betrothal and in very poor or primitive villages might even serve as a marriage rite, even if no formal words of promise had been spoken or tokens such as rings exchanged.

There's an ancient love song about this concept, traditionally sung by a woman, but my father knew it as well as his own name and taught it to me one Sunday after we'd returned from the woods, as we warmed ourselves in a nest of tattered quilts beside the fire. He said Granny Ashpet sang it almost daily to Grandpa Asa, despite her indifference and impatience with his courting.

_Set me as a seal upon your arm,_  
_As a seal upon your heart;_  
_For love is strong as death,  
_ _And jealousy fierce as the grave._

Jealousy meant something else in those long-ago days. It wasn't so much about wanting what someone else has as guarding what was yours and protecting it with all your passion and might _._

 _Granny Ashpet's resemblance to a cougar didn't end with her hunting prowess and her green-gold eyes,_ Dad used to say with a laugh. _She pretended not to care two pins for Grandpa Asa, right up to the moment he walked into that shack and caught her singing and sewing her bridal doeskins, but once he was hers, well and truly, with little tin rings on their hands, she'd happily bite any woman who looked at him too long._ Her _boy, she called him, all short and hook-nosed and plain as he was. Hers, whole and entire._

 _Mine,_ a jealous girl would say, and cling to Peeta Mellark with all her might, and a Seam girl tighter than any other. She would have no fear that he might stray once his promise had been given, but she would surely fear another trying to steal him away.

"Maybe…maybe it was more still," I tell him, my heart breaking, and quote softly. " _Set me as a seal_ –"

" _Upon your arm,_ " he finishes for me, just as softly. " _As a seal upon your heart._ "

" _Oh_ ," I whisper, and I look away from him because I can no longer veil the grief in my eyes.

This is why he wears her tattered little scrap of red cloth; why he wore it all through his Games and kissed it at every opportunity, even caked with blood and filth as it would have been, and why he continues to wear it to this day, even when sleeping and working. He's pledged himself to his Seam sweetheart, whole and entire, the way sweetheart ribbons used to bind a pair together.

Peeta might give away a red ribbon at holiday-time to support tradition, to make his huntress feel special for a day or two, but he wouldn't wear one himself unless he'd dedicated himself to the giver. That's why he could tie a red ribbon around an orange and tuck it into my hands as I slept but never even think about wearing the ribbon I tied around his rabbit-skin pillow – assuming he _is_ my night companion, which was always a ludicrous notion and once I firmly abandon here and now.

Peeta Mellark would never share my bed for any reason, let alone leave me sweetheart's tokens and weep over my gifts and press kisses to my braid.

Yes, he tied on the ribbon I presented with his antlers, but that was clearly done out of pity. He must have perceived the gift as a last-ditch effort to see my ribbon on some boy's arm and accordingly tied it on himself. All that talk of taming and belonging to each other was well-intentioned nonsense; more kind, beautiful lies.

"Katniss," he murmurs, and he turns my face toward his with a gentle hand on my cheek. "You're _crying_ ," he breathes, something I hadn't yet noticed myself, and brings his other hand to my face as well, to smooth away the wetness beneath my eyes. "What's wrong, little sweetheart?" he asks, as tenderly as if he were probing for a wound, and I want to snap at him, to tell him to quit being so nice because that only makes it worse.

"I don't want you to get married," I choke out, gazing hopelessly into his worried eyes. "I want things to always stay the way they are now; just like this."

His brows fly up to his hairline. "Katniss," he puzzles, "I told you it wouldn't happen soon, maybe not ever –"

"But it _will_ ," I insist through a sniffle, " _so_ much sooner than you think. Your moon-girl will adore you – if she doesn't already – and then she'll be on this sofa in your arms, sharing pies and tea and oranges and blankets and –"

"Katniss," he breaks in gently, but his lips are curving upward as though something I said was amusing. "Is that what this is all about? You're –" his lips twitch – " _jealous_ of my sweetheart?"

"I'm jealous of _you_ ," I retort. "It's not the same thing at all."

His eyes widen at this declaration but my jealousy has nothing to do with sweethearts and ribbons; with loving him like a woman loves a man. I'm a vixen besotted with a human boy, true enough, but it's my playmate and companion I'm loathe to lose, not my sweetheart. "I _like_ this," I explain, gesturing at us, our pose, the table littered with empty pie jars, even the flickering hearth. "I like our routine: skiing and eating and…and just _being_ with you," I finish hoarsely. "I don't want her to take that away from me."

 _I don't want her to take_ you _away from me,_ I whimper silently and hope he can't read the full truth in my eyes.

He stares at me with eyes at once amused and sad. "You really think any of that would change if we got married?" he wonders.

"Well, it's bound to," I snap, wondering how he can be so dense, and pull away from the hands still cradling my face. Does he really think his wife will sit contentedly by the fire while he and I ski or skate or picnic on the stable floor? "Having a wife will change _everything_ ," I tell him. "What your meals consist of and where you eat them, how you fill your days and even – _especially_ – these quiet bedtime rituals. And then where does that leave me?"

He smiles faintly, but a grin is threatening at the corners of his mouth. "Katniss, even if we _did_ get married someday, I promise you, very little would change about your life here," he assures me. "That is –" he blushes deeply – "I'd like to think it might get _better_ , even, but I don't want to make assumptions on your behalf."

 _Better?_ my appalled heart cries. _For another girl to be at your table in the morning and in your arms at night?_

But then, from Peeta's perspective, why _wouldn't_ it be a good thing for his bride to join us here? We've established that he and I are friends but otherwise there's only silent Pollux and Lavinia and little Rye for company, and Peeta knows that I come from a small family, with a beloved sister that I left behind to join him in the woods. Maybe he thinks it'll be comforting for me to have a female friend; another Seam girl to talk about home with, and such.

And to be fair, I've always known she would come someday; that things wouldn't – couldn't – stay as they are forever. _Crumbs, little mousekin,_ I remind myself firmly. _Gobble up his richness while you can. Glut yourself on these moments, and you'll hardly notice when they've gone._

"I should go to bed," I announce, suddenly so weary and downcast that all I can think of is burying my face in a deerskin pillow and forgetting this turbulent day in my snug den of woodsmoke and furs and pine.

"Of course," Peeta says quietly. He eases back a fold of the blanket that covers me and scoots his hips away from mine, giving me more room to maneuver and get up. "I'll clean all this up, of course, and you can sleep as –"

" _Don't_ ," I blurt, stopping his words with a hand because I don't want him to dismiss me with the gentle reminder he gives every night. I can't bear to sit here one moment longer, and I can't bear to get up and walk away from him.

I lower my hand and look at him helplessly, as though he can provide a solution to a problem he can't even begin to guess.

"Okay," he says slowly. "Um…would you rather do the dishes, or did you want to help me–?"

I silence him with a shake of my head. I have no idea how to explain what I'm feeling or how to ask for what I want, and then the words tumble out in a whisper: "I-I don't like leaving you at the end of the night."

The words startle me as much as him and I can't begin to imagine what possessed me to say them – to clumsily attempt a claim on the few precious hours of Peeta's day that he isn't already forced to share with me – but far from being appalled he looks stunned, almost awed by this revelation. His eyes are soft with disbelief and a strange longing.

"I don't like it when you leave me either," he whispers back.

_Then don't._

The words hang between us in the heavy silence, utterly impossible yet positively crying out to be said.

 _Come upstairs with me,_ I plead silently. _Come to my den and let me wrap you in coal-warmed deerskin and furs. There are pillows filled with pine needles and another of rabbit-skin and wild goose down that I sewed with my own hands._

_I think I made it for you._

_The red ribbon I tied around it is gone – claimed by the woods, the only thing in this world that seems to want me for its own – but that makes no difference to the comfort it will provide._

_You can sleep in the burrow of my arms, snug and warm and_ so _safe, my sweet boy – or I can sleep in yours, in the drowsy autumn splendor of your bedroom. Surely you would prefer its comforts, and this bird – this kit, this cougar cub – would delight to share them with you._

_I'll happily drink in cedar and cream, honeyed cloves and your own sweet musk in our nest of sunset._

Of course, both of these fantasies are impossible to speak aloud and unforgivable to harbor in my mind. So I offer the essence of both in a feeble plea.

"Please don't make me leave you,"I whisper, not caring how pathetic I sound because I can't bear the alternative. I don't think it's physically possible at this moment for me to stand, let alone walk away from him. "It feels like all we've been doing today is leaving each other, over and over again," I say. "Let me sit with you till I fall asleep –" this seems fair enough and asks almost nothing of him – "you don't have to talk to me or tell me stories or anything," I explain quickly, "just… _be_ with me till I fall asleep, and when you're ready to go to bed you can just cover me with a blanket and go upstairs."

For several breathless moments he simply stares at me and the longing in his eyes is almost overwhelming. I wonder if he craves a night companion like the one that he – or the woods – provided for me. A silent, gentle presence to share his enormous bed, to warm his covers and sweeten his dreams.

 _I could be that companion,_ I offer silently. _I could do that for you, and so much more besides. I could ready you for bed the way Lavinia does me, warming your sheets with a coal-pan and smoothing sweet oils into your skin, or if you didn't want that I could simply join you in darkness, tucking the covers snugly around you and leaving little presents on your pillow to greet you when you rise._

"You're my companion, Katniss," he says at last, his voice hoarse and very soft. "Your presence is a treasure for which I will gladly pay any price."

I shake my head fiercely because this answer makes no sense whatsoever. I've just asked an unthinkable favor of him and he's suggesting that he should pay me for it? "No," I insist, "I just – it's _me_ who wants something and me who should pay its price."

He takes my face in his hands with a short, exasperated laugh. "My obstinate little goose," he sighs, butting his forehead against mine. "My precious, darling, _infuriating_ little goose: I _want_ to stay with you," he groans. "I want you to stay with me till the fire subsides to drowsy embers and the triumphant huntress-moon seeks for her cloud-bed amid the gentle rose and golden rays of the sun's lullaby."

I pull back with a start, certain he's mocking me with this poetic parroting of my father's beautiful folktale, but his eyes are solemn and sincere and positively blazing with longing. "You want me to stay with you," I echo, unable to comprehend how any of this could possibly be true. "You want to stay with me."

"Till we both fall asleep," he says, shyly now. "If you'll allow it."

At this moment, there is nothing in the world I want so much as to spend the whole of the night in my sweetheart's presence. I don't care if we're talking or touching or simply sitting on opposite corners of the sofa, caught up in writing letters or our own quiet handiwork till we doze off against the cushions.

But of course I can hardly tell Peeta that, and so I consent as quietly and calmly as I can: "I'll allow it."

His face splits in a blinding grin and I'm possessed with another fit of giddy, jubilant giggles. "Of _course_ I'll allow it, silly boy!" I exclaim, throttling him gently by the shoulders. "I asked for it in the first place. Just tell me what you want: extra coverlets, pillows-?"

Impossible as it seems, his grin grows broader and more radiant with every breath. "Yes to both, I think," he replies, so happily that I want to kiss every inch of his flushed cheeks and plant a garden of kisses squarely on his sweet, smiling mouth. "Do whatever you need to get ready for bed – wash up, change clothes, whatever you would normally do – and meet me back here."

"Okay," I answer, certain I must be grinning like an idiot myself, and because I can't hold it in any longer, I lean in and press a quick, bold kiss to the tip of his nose. "I'll be back soon," I promise, " _so_ soon!" and I spring from the sofa like a doe.

I run upstairs so quickly that it's a miracle I don't fall or even stumble, and once there I peel out of my clothing and exchange it for the only thing in all the world that I want to wear: the pretty New Year's nightgown that Peeta gave me. Chickadees and pine cones and little red berries, with a red ribbon at my neck. All the magic of New Year's in one cozy length of flannel.

I brush my teeth in distracted haste and don't bother with the chamomile face wash and rich rose-scented cream that Lavinia would present if she were here. An afternoon of brain-tanning followed by a bath of warm milk – no, _cream_ – and honey have left my skin silkier than I ever could have dreamed; anything more would be excessive and pointless.

Finally I return to my bedroom, practically dancing with anticipation, to retrieve pillows and a blanket. I take both deerskin and pine pillows but leave the rabbit-skin one behind, thinking all at once of my night companion and feeling a profound, almost painful regret for forsaking him tonight. Will he come even if I'm not here? Will my absence worry him?

Will he miss me?

After a moment's thought I decide to make up his side of the bed anyway. Lavinia didn't prepare the warming pan – she must have been even more eager than I realized to spend the evening with her husband – so I dismiss that and turn back the covers, plump the rabbit-skin pillow, and bring the remaining pine needle pillow close by, so my companion can slumber with its fragrance beneath his nose. I've decided to take the fox fur coverlet downstairs with me so I replace it with the extra fur from the chest, folding it in half lengthwise to cover my companion's side of the bed with a double layer of warmth.

I survey my handiwork with a frown. The absence of the warming pan is forgivable, especially since I can't begin to guess how soon my companion will come if I'm not here, but he needs some sort of treat or present on his pillow as both a gift and an apology.

I go to my drawer of precious things and after a quick perusal, take out a colorful handful of gumdrops – my most cherished of the New Year's sweets Peeta gave me – and lay them in the center of the rabbit-skin pillow. I want to do more still; I feel like I should leave him a note explaining and apologizing for my absence, but what in the world would I say? "Dear stranger: I'm spending the night on the sofa with Peeta rather than in my own bed with you"?

What's more, any kind of communication outside of our gifts, be it spoken or written, still feels forbidden. My night companion has yet to reveal himself to me, so for me to address him directly seems like an unforgivable breach of trust.

 _And after all,_ I muse, _my companion might just as well be the white bear of my dreams, in which case it's unlikely that he could read any note I left anyway_ – but the gumdrops would certainly delight his sweet tooth. I smile at the thought and bend to press a kiss to the colorful little heap, as I would to my companion's wet black nose. "Good night, my white bear," I whisper fondly. "I won't leave you forever, I promise."

My companion being seen to, I gather up the weighty breadth of my fox fur coverlet, but rather than balling it up in my arms for ease of carrying I wrap myself in it like a cloak. This particular blanket was one of the first things I discovered when I arrived in my new bedroom for the first time and one of the first things that seemed to identify the room as mine, and there's a strange comfort to wearing it like a garment; almost like covering up with my own skin. Like the fox-maiden of my father's tale, who only dared return to her true form in the absence of her beloved.

 _A fierce and magnificent vixen,_ murmurs my father's voice in my mind as I look on my reflection, _what matter a little musk in her hair or loam about her paws?_ and I blush deeply at my foolishness.

I collect my pillows and go downstairs, still wrapped in the fox fur – _in my own true skin,_ I think wryly – to find Peeta crouched near the fireplace, dressed in his New Year's flannel trousers and thermal undershirt, with my red ribbon still tied around his left arm. He's pushed back all of the furniture to leave a wide open space in front of the hearth and is shaping the plush length of his enormous white bearskin into a nest, just as he did this afternoon in the stable, with a bolster of sunset-orange pillows along one side.

As surely as I am a fox, my boy is a bear: broad and strong and soft all at once, with honey-scented breath. I want to climb into the nest of his paws and scurry up one powerful foreleg to nuzzle his neck with my little snout.

He looks up as I arrive and clambers to his feet, his jaw slack. "My little fox," he breathes.

My own jaw drops in response, not because of my silly fox-maiden musings of a few moments ago but something much deeper and sadder and far more beloved. "What did you call me?" I rasp.

He blushes a cranberry-crimson. "I'm sorry," he says. "I saw you wrapped in the fox fur and it reminded me of an old tale my father used to tell, where a prince met a little fox beneath an apple tree."

I raise my brows in surprise. "A golden-haired prince?" I wonder, because I know this story too, or rather a different version thereof, where a little fox meets a prince beneath an apple tree. Two species find each other: a fox, tiny and wild and endearingly obsessed with chickens, and a yellow-haired boy, and the fox teaches the curious prince how to tame a wild thing. Even as a child the ending broke my heart to bits, because the fox came to love the prince almost immediately but the prince's heart belonged to a rose, whole and entire, and after taming the fox he left to return to his flower.

My father rarely told it without tears in his eyes.

"The ending always broke my heart," Peeta says. "I always wondered why he didn't stay with the fox or take it with him after winning its trust."

"Its _heart_ ," I correct in a whisper. "It was a girl fox – a little vixen. That was how my father told it."

"A little vixen," Peeta echoes, and somehow, mysteriously, his hands are on my shoulders, drawing me close. "My little vixen," he murmurs, "do you suppose anyone, prince or poor boy, could leave you behind after winning your heart?"

It's too much. I drop my pillows and let him pull me into his arms, fox cloak and all, and burrow my face into the rough weave of his thermal shirt, already warmed by the strong, steady pulse beneath. _I love you,_ I tell his heart, silently shaping the words against his chest, and rub my eyes against him to extinguish the warning burn of tears. _I love you so much that it hurts. Love you so much that I can scarcely breathe._

One strong hand inches up to cradle my head. "Little fox," Peeta whispers, "please let me patch your heart."

He doesn't explain how he knows that it's broken, but he doesn't have to. I've been excruciatingly obvious in my heartache all day; my mention of the fox and the prince merely laid it plain for him.

 _You can't,_ I answer silently. _It's your presence – my love for you – that sewed it up to begin with. A hot thread of scarlet, like a flaming sweetheart ribbon, darting in and out again and again with needle-strikes as swift and keen as bowshots._ If you cut away that thread my heart would crumble to pieces, but as long as he's there, woven into the very fabric of my heart, it will never _not_ hurt.

He holds me back a little ways and looks immensely relieved not to see tears on my face. "Tell me what will make you happy," he urges. "I can make you a special meal, paint you a picture, order anything you'd like from the mercantile –"

All of these things would make wonderful gifts, but they're no substitute for his love and I neither need nor especially want them at this moment. "This is enough," I tell him, nodding at the fireplace and the fur spread out before it. " _You_ are enough."

He closes his eyes with a sigh so deep I feel it whisper across my cheek. "We…we haven't discussed this yet," he says hoarsely, fluttering his eyes open to reveal a look of pure grief. "But: if there _is_ someone, Katniss – a-a boy that you love," he clarifies, "I want you to know: I'll do whatever it takes to make the match happen. You can move back to town, free from our bargain, and I'll arrange a house and an income and whatever else you want –"

"No sweetheart," I assure him, maybe a little too quickly, but the scenario he's proposing – me leaving him to marry some random boy from Twelve – is both ridiculous and revolting.

"Are you sure?" he asks gently, tipping his head in a searching look. "I can't imagine _any_ boy refusing the offer of your heart, but parents and money matters can complicate –"

"No boy," I tell him firmly. "Just you and this beautiful house in the woods. That's all I want."

"Is that so?" he wonders, but the grief has melted from his eyes; contentment and a playful gleam have merrily taken its place. "In that case, I'll cancel the crate of lemons," he says, "since there are clearly no longer any greedy goslings here, and I can save a fortune in heavy cream and –"

I pounce on him like a fox on a mouse in a snowdrift, and the action must catch him wholly off-guard because he teeters backward with a desperate squawk and drops like a stone onto the bearskin and pillows, with a fur-draped Katniss sprawled on top. "I thought you liked your greedy gosling," I tease, hot and breathless from the fur, the fire, the fall, and him, and peck his cheek with my beak-nose for emphasis. "Your _precious, darling, infuriating little goose_ –"

"I love my little goose," he pants through his laughter. "It's the vixen I'm not so sure about."

I sit up so quickly that my head spins, or maybe it was my head spinning that made me sit up so fast. Peeta lies bracketed by my bent legs, wide-eyed and horrified, and for a half-second I let my unprotected heart crack. It was an obvious figure of speech, a joke, a thoughtless expression of otherwise genuine affection. He doesn't love me and I know he never will; he meant nothing by those words but stupid Katniss had to draw attention to them by reacting with hopeful shock.

"Katniss," he croaks, but I don't want to hear it.

"Well, that's only to be expected," I reply with a cheerfulness so bright that it almost convinces _me_. "Goslings can be remarkably endearing, but vixens are all toothy snouts and earthy paws."

I feel his sigh of relief between my thighs and know this was absolutely the right thing to say. "I was only kidding, you know," he says lightly. "I like the vixen and the redcap – and the willow catkin," he adds breathily, brushing my cheek with his fingertips. "I enjoy you all equally. The gosling just makes the most fuss and frankly, I adore it."

" _Peep-peep_ ," I reply, wholly certain that I'm grinning like an idiot and may never get my face to form another expression ever again, and with a delighted "Come here, you," Peeta tugs me back down and wraps himself around me. His legs, heavy and hard with muscle, curl around mine as his arms encircle my torso, enclosing me entirely in the delicious musky heat of his body as we nestle together on his bearskin.

Luka Mellark was never so efficient at immobilizing his opponent.

"You are _so_ precious, Katniss," he croons against my forehead. "Gosling, vixen, redcap… I was lonely – _so_ lonely before you came to live with me, but I had no idea just how empty my life was without you."

"A-All of me?" I tease breathlessly.

"Beak to tail feathers," he murmurs, "and all four of your earthy little paws, and your bright red cap. Don't ever leave me," he groans, hugging his thighs tighter around mine for emphasis. "Not one feather. I need you all, and all _of_ you."

"Okay," I sigh, at once more content than I would ever have imagined a person could be and yet needy; fiercely so. Something hot and restless is coiling in my belly – or uncoiling, maybe; a small hibernating snake rousing with the thaw. It may be January outside but it's spring in Peeta's arms, all melting snow and crocus buds and warm glorious sunlight.

"Do you still want to stay the night down here with me?" he asks softly, easing back a little to free me from the snug bonds of his thighs. "Because, to be honest, I'm not sure I can let you go."

I wriggle back just enough to look him in the eye. "Well, this _is_ a nest," I observe playfully. "Where else would a gosling sleep?"

He smiles; a joyous radiant smile that's full of the rising sun, and I cheekily add, " _You_ , however, I don't know about. This here nest is for birds only –"

"I'm a lonely gander, remember?" he says, giving a mournful _honk-honk!_ as proof, and I snuggle back into his arms with a happy chuckle.

"Okay," I concede, nuzzling his neck in beak-fashion. "Small greedy goslings need lonely ganders with broad wings to keep them warm."

"They do indeed," he replies, rubbing his cheek against my hair, and he curls both arms tighter across my back.

Thus entangled, neither of us particularly wants to move, but there are pillows scattered every which way by our fall and I'm the only one properly covered by the fox fur, so we crawl apart to make a little more sense of our bedding. I silently hand Peeta the pine needle pillows, which he accepts with a shy, grateful smile, and offer the deerskin pillow, which he gently declines.

"You deserve to be wrapped in deerskin like a wild huntress queen," he demurs, "and a little bird told me I might have a precious yard or two of deerskin to call my own someday."

"The little bird told you no such thing," I retort, my face flaming with embarrassment and pleasure. "The little bird didn't want you peeking in her workshop, is all."

"Oh, is that the way of things?" he counters, but he's so radiantly, ridiculously happy that he can't even pretend a huff. "Well then, greedy redcapped vixen, don't bother snooping around my art room," he says, "because this lonely gander certainly isn't wasting his time making a present for the likes of _you_."

All at once I recall the muted paint smudges on Peeta's arms when I met him in the hallway and his description of _something very important that needs my attention_ and realize that I've ignored the obvious answer all along. "Are you painting me a picture?" I squeak, near-bursting with delight.

"Of course not," he replies, but the words come out garbled by laughter. "I don't like you, little goose. You gobble up all of my bread and cakes and turn up your bill at my good and generous brother's fine pies –"

I tackle him, this time with the fox fur held between my hands like a fishing net, pinning him beneath its silky heft. "I'm not a turkey, silly gander," I chide, poking the tip of his nose with mine. "Goslings peck, not _gobble_."

"In that case, _clever_ little gosling, I'll start feeding you outside with the rest of the birds," he replies breathily. "Griddle cakes and bacon and fat bricks of shortbread are made for gobbling, not for dainty gosling bills which would be more than satisfied with an apple peel –"

"I would, if you gave it to me," I admit softly. "But if those are the rules, I'll happily be a turkey – at least for mealtimes."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" he laughs. "Don't you know me well enough by now? I'd feed you your weight in cakes if you sat in the kitchen long enough, little goose. I'm certainly not going to refuse you a hearty meal because you're not a turkey!"

"Well, good," I declare with a grin, climbing off him and reaching for my deerskin pillow. "Because those ridiculous tiny pies aren't going to last long in my gullet, and I'll be needing a hearty breakfast in a couple of hours."

"A _couple of_ _hours_?" he echoes in mock horror. "I'd best get to sleep right away if I'm to expect a greedy gosling in my kitchen peeping for her breakfast in a couple of hours." He lifts the edge of the fox coverlet demonstratively and I crawl underneath, deerskin pillow in tow, to nestle into his warmth.

There's a dreamlike familiarity to this moment, and it takes me longer than it should to remember that we've actually done this before – just yesterday afternoon, after sharing our New Year's orange. Our positions were slightly different but it still ended with Peeta lifting my fur coverlet and the pair of us curled together beneath it.

"I liked that," I murmur drowsily. "I mean: yesterday, when you took a nap with me."

"I liked it too," he murmurs back, smiling at me across the deerskin pillow. "Thank you for asking me."

"We could do it again sometime, if you want," I offer through a yawn.

"Would now be okay?" he wonders.

"Mmm," I sigh, but my eyelids are already drifting closed.

Peeta chuckles gently. "All right, sleepy songbird," he says. "I'm not quite sleepy myself just yet, so in return for your company, how would you like a bedtime story? I _did_ promise you one this afternoon…"

My eyes fly open, no longer drowsy in the least. "Yes please!" I say. "What sort of story is it?"

"A very long one," he warns, but with a smile that betrays the reaction he anticipates for this excessive treat. A very long bedtime story for me is like a wagonload of ginger cake with a barrelful of custard, something Peeta has learned all too well.

"Is it a fairy tale?" I ask. I'm always hungry for new tales or even a Mellark variation on one I know already, and Peeta has a deft and golden tongue; a seemingly effortless eloquence that is especially apparent in his storytelling. He paints with words, filling my mind from edge to edge with magic and beauty and the promise of impossible love.

He tips his head, considering. "You could say that," he replies, his smile softening, and he reaches a hand across the deerskin to stroke my cheek.

"Then what are you waiting for?" I demand playfully, tugging at his shirt like an impatient child. "I need breakfast in less than a couple of hours, lazy gander! _Peep-peep-PEEP!_ "

"All right, greedy gosling," he laughs, withdrawing his hand to sit up and make a bolster of pillows behind him. "I'll give you a story with all the trimmings, but there's one small thing you have to do for me first." He settles back against the pillows with a mischievous grin and waggles his eyebrows at me.

"And what is that?" I wonder, sitting up to regard him squarely, and his impishness vanishes in a roaring blush.

"Would you – that is, would you mind – pushing your sleeves up?" he asks shyly.

I do as he bids, momentarily perplexed, and he pulls me to him, snug against his side, with my cheek on his shoulder and my arm curled across his chest. " _Thank you,_ " he sighs and proceeds to stroke every inch of my hand and forearm; every bone and tendon and tender valley in-between.

"Mmm," I sigh back, burrowing my face into warm musky fabric and the solid chest beneath it, and only slightly to hide a blush of pleasure. "If this story is any good I'll let you touch my hands whenever you like."

"I'll do my very best," he promises, threading his fingers between mine and stroking from base to tip and down again, slowly and ceaselessly.

"Once upon a time," he begins, "there was a baker's son: a fat little boy with red cheeks and yellow curls, who loved cheese buns and shortbread and birds. Behind his father's bakery grew an apple tree, and the boy delighted to stand in its shadows and tuck crumbs and seeds into its many crooks for the robins and sparrows that sang above."

I smile against his chest. I like this story already, and this boy.

* * *

_Once upon a time there was a baker's son: a fat little boy with red cheeks and yellow curls, who loved cheese buns and shortbread and birds. Behind his father's bakery grew an apple tree, and the boy delighted to stand in its shadows and tuck crumbs and seeds into its many crooks for the robins and sparrows that sang above._

_And on his first day of school, this boy saw a little girl. Tiny and perfect she was, like the wren that sang in the apple tree at suppertime. Her eyes were at once like his grandmother's hair and the downy catkins on the meadow-willow: soft and silver-gray, and her skin was the color of cream-coffee and dove's feathers. Her hair was black as coal and she wore it in two braids, snug and shining; one over each shoulder and tied at the ends with little bits of red cloth. And more than this: she wore a red plaid dress, just like the 'lassies' in the tales the oldest miners told each other dreamily on Sunday afternoons on their stoops._

_She was, in short, the loveliest thing the boy had ever seen, and then she opened her mouth and stars came out. The little girl sang, and it was the most beautiful sound the boy had ever heard. In it was the coo of the mourning dove, the merry, bubbling chirp of the wren, the cardinal's whistle, the jay's brilliant cry, and yet it was more beautiful than all of those birdsongs combined, and as the girl sang, those very birds, and more besides – every bird outside the schoolroom window – fell silent to hear her._

_The boy fell in love with her then and there._

_When the school day was done, the boy ran home without waiting for his brothers and begged his father for some pennies. For you see, love means marriage and a bride must have special hairpins, and this little boy was minded to go straight to the mercantile and buy some to present to his girl the very next morning, before someone else could claim her._

_Of course, he was too shy to admit this to his father, who was a good and kindly man, and thus the baker assumed that the boy wanted money for a toy or some sweets, like his brothers. He offered his earnest little son a penny a day if he woke extra early and helped with deliveries for the rest of the week, and the boy eagerly agreed. Five days remained in the week, and five pennies was a small fortune to this boy. Surely five pennies would be enough for the special hairpins._

_Five days proved an eternity, for each morning the boy walked to school with his brothers and saw his sweetheart perched in the sunniest spot in the yard, drinking up rays like a robin in June, and though she kept to herself, each afternoon a child or two trickled over into her company and endeavored to make friends. The boy went beet-red at this and clenched his fat little fists at his sides, for he ached more than anything to go and talk to the little girl with the voice like starlight, but he was shy and needed the hairpins to give him courage. Once he had them in his pocket, he was sure he'd be brave enough to walk up to her then and there, kiss her right on the cheek, and ask her to be his bride._

_And so each morning the boy woke a little earlier than the day before and climbed over his brother to push open the bedroom window and sit there awhile, breathing the crisp autumn air, watching the last stars wink out of sight, and listening as, one by one, the birds awoke in song. All baker's sons come to love mornings – or seek for a different trade – but the boy savored these five in particular for what their labors would bring him. He would soon have a bird of his own, thought the boy happily. A beautiful little bird, all black and silver and creamy dove-brown, who sang the most beautiful songs in her starlight voice. A voice so rare and lovely that all the other birds fell silent to hear her song._

_He would make her a nest, the boy decided as he sat at his window in those twilight hours and wished and dreamed. High up in the apple tree, where his mean-spirited mother couldn't reach them, no matter how she bellowed. They would eat the delicious pink fruits until the snow fell, and then his grandmother and father would string the tree with cranberry garlands and bird cakes for the boy and his bird-girl to feast upon all winter long._

_Week's end came at last, and when the last loaf had been delivered, the boy's father bent down to give him the five precious pennies. The little boy cupped them in both hands like a treasure and set off at once for the mercantile, as fast as his chubby legs would carry him. He burst through the shop door, his little heart racing with joy, and charged proudly up to the penny counter, for he knew that was where the hairpins were kept. Then he set his precious handful of pennies on the countertop and asked the shop clerk to show him some hairpins fit for the prettiest girl in the world._

_The man laughed at such a request from such a small boy but duly brought out the tray of hairpins. There were gold pins and silver pins and pins with little silk flowers or pretend-jewels affixed, the likes of which the boy had never seen before, and after much careful deliberation over which was the prettiest and which would best suit his bird-girl, the boy settled on a card of dull silver pins set with tiny white silk flowers. His girl's name was a white flower, he had learned, and the silver would match her eyes._

_He pointed out his choice to the clerk and the man, laughing at such serious consideration over what must surely be an inconsequential purchase, asked the boy for fifteen pennies. This was, of course, three times what the boy had brought; an outrageous sum for such a small boy, and his eyes began to fill with tears. "How much for these?" he asked, pointing at some unembellished silver pins, and was told twelve pennies. He pointed at another kind and another, till he came to the plain black ones with the poorest springs, the ones the miner's wives cross-hatched to hold up their braids on the hottest days, and even those wretched pins – pins he would be ashamed to present to his bird-girl – cost ten pennies._

_The little boy burst into tears and ran for the door, leaving his precious pennies behind, only to be caught up in his father's strong arms before he had taken ten steps. The baker had followed him, of course, curious to see what purchase had so inspired his youngest son to rise extra early and work so tirelessly these past five days, and had been surprised in no small measure to find him choosing hairpins at the mercantile._

_The boy wept on his father's neck and confessed all: that he had fallen in love with a black-braided bird-girl with a voice like starlight, and he had worked these five days for the pennies to buy her hairpins and ask her to be his bride, but the pennies were not enough for any pins at all, and now another boy would win his bird-girl's heart._

_At this the baker set his son on his feet and gently mopped his tears with a handkerchief, and the expression on his face was kind but grave. "You didn't tell me you were raising a bride price," he said to the boy. "That is a father's duty, and privilege."_

_These words made little sense to the boy, but then his father guided him back to the counter and took a pouch from his own pocket, heavy with coins, and set it alongside the boy's precious pennies. "It was these you wanted?" the baker asked, lifting out the card of silver pins set with white flowers, and the boy nodded eagerly, his teary eyes wide as saucers and his shoulders still shaking with sobs. "Best get two of them," the baker said, picking up a second card of the beautiful pins and handing both –_ thirty _pennies worth of the most precious hairpins the boy had ever seen – to the clerk for purchase. "Your bird-girl has long hair already," the baker explained, quite solemnly, "and by the time you wed it will have grown longer still, more than might be managed by one little card of pins."_

_The boy hugged his father with all his might and began to weep all over again. He understood little of what had been said, but the baker had purchased hairpins for the bird-girl – two cards worth, to hold her coal-black hair in its bridal braids – and that was explanation enough for a small boy in love. The clerk, who had ceased his laughter when the baker had spoken, handed the boy the parcel of pins, now wrapped neatly in white tissue, and the baker took his boy's hand and led him out of the mercantile, but instead of returning home to the bakery, they made their way to the shoe shop._

_Now the boy was friends with the shoemaker's children, but he didn't want to play with them just then, and for one horrible moment he imagined that his father thought it was the shoemaker's daughter – a round, ruddy girl with yellow hair that frizzled in the summertime – that he wished to wed. The boy protested this vehemently, hiding the pin-parcel deep in his trouser pocket so the shoemaker's daughter wouldn't see – for she knew the hairpin tradition as well as he and thought it entirely romantic – but the baker only chuckled and shook his head. "I know well who your bird-girl is," he assured the boy, and there was a strange sadness in his eyes at these words. "And if you are old enough to think of bridal hairpins, it's time you began another task."_

_He led the boy into the shop, where his uncle – the baker's younger brother – also worked, and up to the living quarters, where the baker's aged mother – the boy's beloved grandmother – shared two small rooms with her bachelor son. The old woman was thin and frail with age, but her blue eyes were still bright and keen and very wise, and she guessed at once why her youngest grandson had been brought to her. Then again, the boy had chattered to his grandmother about the starlight-voiced bird-girl every morning when he delivered her sweet buns and soft honey-bread, so it had been no great riddle to solve._

"' _Tis the way of our men," she told the boy with a smile when his father had gone downstairs once more. "To fall deeply and fast, and give their hearts away in childhood. When we were eight years old, your grandfather – who was a fat, clumsy boy – pushed me into a mud puddle and covered me with kisses. I blackened his eye for it but we were best friends within a year and sweethearts soon after. Likewise, your father loved his Lyssa in the cradle and wanted babies with her when he was little older than you are now. So to see you set on becoming a bridegroom is no great surprise, and it does my old heart good to see my sweetest grandchild in love, and with so worthy a girl besides."_

_She bade the little boy sit beside her on her bed, then she took down her long silver braid and handed the boy her hairbrush. "Come now," she said. "Brush it well. I shall teach you first to braid and then to shape the bride-coils."_

_The boy's fingers were chubby and unskilled and, like any child, he had games and friends with which his time might be better spent, but he knew well the significance of this task and set to it with the same diligence he had dedicated to the deliveries which had earned him those five precious pennies. He knew now that it was not enough simply to have the pins: he must learn to braid his sweetheart's hair in the bridal fashion before he could think of asking her to marry him, and he worked tirelessly to learn this task. Every afternoon he stood at the schoolhouse door and watched his bird-girl till her black braids were out of sight, then he hurried to the shoe shop, arriving even before the shoemaker's own children, and ran upstairs to wake his grandmother from her nap and practice the bridal braids with her. He made a pot of the cinnamon tea she loved and gave her the sugar cookies from his lunch, which he always saved for her, and she always gave him one back and sips from her teacup besides, so they could share the treat._

_His grandmother's hair was smooth and lustrous as a skein of silver thread, and as the weeks went by the boy combed and plaited and wound that silver hair in clumsy coils and thought of his bird-girl's eyes. He breathed in sweet supple shoe leather that reminded him of her father's jacket, the one he sometimes draped around her shoulders when they came by the bakery on brisk days, and sipped warm cinnamon tea that made him think of New Year's, of kissing boughs and red plaid dresses and the scent of evergreens that clung to his girl's braids on Sunday afternoons. One day he would weave sweetheart ribbons through those braids, he thought, and white blossoms besides, but for now, it was enough to be thinking of their marriage._

_The boy's middle brother teased him for spending his afternoons with their grandmother rather than the neighboring children and learning to braid instead of playing with balls and sticks or wrestling like their father had taught them, but their eldest brother, who was twice the little boy's age and quite grown up at ten years of age, spoke up for him, saying that every man in their family had to learn the bridal braids at some point and their grandmother was old and no longer entirely well; there was precious little time remaining to learn from her. The eldest brother, in fact, visited their grandmother once a week to practice the bridal braids himself, and he encouraged the middle brother to do the same, but the middle brother was a spoiled child, their mother's favorite. He liked games and toys and sweets and had no interest in spending long hours with an old woman, learning to braid for the sake of his future wife, though this did nothing to dissuade his brothers, who happily continued their visits to the shoe shop and sometimes even went together. The eldest brother had not yet found his bride, he claimed, but he went red-cheeked anyway when his little brother or grandmother teased him about her existence, and their wedding one day._

_Not long after, their grandmother's heart weakened so that she could no longer leave her bed, and a few days later she died. The boy was devastated by the loss, as were his father and brothers, and for many, many – oh, so many – days afterward there was no talk of braids and brides. But the boy, young though he was, did not forget his bird-girl._

_Every morning he lingered in the schoolyard till she arrived, black braids dancing as she swung from her mother's hand, and followed those dancing braids into his classroom. He watched and waited to see if she sang again and assured his disappointed self that it was all right when she didn't. After all, some birds sing only at dawn or dusk, and he would have his fill of songs when the bird-girl became his bride. It would be a fine thing indeed to be waken or lulled to sleep, each and every day, by that shimmering starlight voice._

_He watched as she ate coarse home-baked Seam bread and broth from her little tin lunch pail and wished with all his heart that he dared give her a piece of his own stale shortbread, but he was shy and ashamed of his offering, and so he blushed and sat and gazed with more longing than ever. Every day he followed her dancing braids out of the school as fast as his chubby legs could carry him, but never once did she look back. She was a wild thing returning to her nest, and he would not have stopped her merry flight even if he could._

_All this while he wished with every fiber of his being that she might fly to him across the schoolyard or classroom and press her starlight mouth to his red cheek in a shy kiss, but even with the precious bride-pins in his pocket, the boy found that his throat stuck shut and his feet fused to the ground in her presence. Every day he gazed at his bird-girl, so often alone on her perch, and yearned for her, but he could not make himself address or even approach her, so magnificent was she in his eyes._

_And so the boy and his bird-girl grew up and, impossible as it seemed, the girl grew even more beautiful with each new day. The boy tried looking at the other girls at school, to see if they likewise sang out stars or had willow catkin eyes or grew in beauty with every sunrise, but not one could hold a candle to his bird-girl. He nourished his love, like a seed hidden deep at the center of his heart, and it flourished and flowered and lit up his face with fiery petals every time he looked at her._

_As the years passed, the boy's friends teased him for not seeking a sweetheart like they did: a pretty, silly girl with yellow curls like his, to cuddle and tease and steal kisses from, but the boy wanted no such thing. When one has carried bridal hairpins for a girl since he was five years old and that girl is a fairy creature besides, no other girl can ever hope to compare._

_Now when he was sixteen, this boy – still red-cheeked and yellow-haired, though no longer quite so fat – was called on a journey; a long and terrible journey that meant hardship and hunger and pain and, almost certainly, the boy's death. And he wept at the tidings, for he knew he would never see his bird-girl again, and he had made such plans. Plans to set her hair with his precious pins and red sweetheart ribbons and make her his wife, or at the very least, keep her warm and well-fed and safe forever in the nest he'd planned for her in his dreams._

_He'd thought often of that nest over the years and feathered it in his mind with all manner of pleasant places for his bird-girl. An enormous kitchen with no less than two ovens, stocked to its rafters with food; half a dozen cozy fires with deep armchairs to either side; even a nursery for their chicks. But now, it seemed, this would never come to pass._

_The boy said goodbye to his friends and family and quickly made plans with his father. If he should die on his journey, he said, everything that had been his should go to his bird-girl, down to his portions of their meals. It belonged to her, the boy said, just as he did, though of course she knew it not. Such plans they made in those last precious minutes, the broken-hearted father and his doomed son, then the baker kissed his boy goodbye and left him to his journey._

_But just when the boy thought he'd cried out every last drop of water in his body, who should come to him but his beloved: the bird-girl herself! She was hesitant and quiet, just like a real bird, but she gave him a gift nonetheless: a scrap of red cloth, like the courting birds in the old tales his grandmother told, but more than that – oh,_ so _much more – the boy knew this fabric as well as he knew the pattern of the bakery curtains and the coverlet on the bed he shared with his brother. It was a scrap from the very dress she'd worn that fateful day when he first heard her sing; the red plaid of miners' fairy tales, and of the boy's own dreams. His bird-girl wore billows of red plaid in his dreams as she danced and sang, the skirts swirling about her swift dusky legs and catching at her belly when it was round and full with his chicks._

_Never had the boy been given anything so precious, though he knew the girl intended it as no such treasure, nor could she guess at what it meant to him. And before the boy could catch his breath after the wonder of the red cloth, his bird-girl gave him another gift, equally as unexpected and even more precious: she leaned forward and kissed his cheek with her starlight mouth, just as he had wished and dreamed for eleven long and lonely years. A swift and gentle kiss it was, like a brush of feathers on bare skin, then just as quickly as she arrived his bird-girl flew away once more._

_The boy had cried all of his tears and said his goodbyes. He had made extensive, if hasty, arrangements for his beloved's care after his death._

_But in the afterglow of his bird-girl's wondrous kiss, the boy thought for the first time: perhaps he could_ live. _He could survive. He could return home, not simply to a baker's wages to keep his bird-girl alive and fed but with a fortune that could provide comfort, even luxury for her – and her family too, for all of their days._

 _The boy promptly tied her red cloth about his wrist – the left one, like a sweetheart or bridegroom – and wore it on every moment of his terrible journey as both lover's token and solemn pledge. And it_ was _terrible, that journey, worse than the most awful nightmare that shakes you from slumber in terror and tears. There was cold and heartbreak and hunger,_ such _hunger for a boy who, while hardly wealthy, had never gone without. One by one the friends he made on this journey were torn from him in increasingly brutal death, and wild beasts roared and lunged and sank their teeth into his tender flesh._

_And always when the pain was greatest, the boy brought his wrist to his lips and kissed the precious red cloth as he thought of his bird-girl and wept with love and despair, longing and grief._

_There should have been no hope for a gentle baker's son in such a cruel game, where both boys and beasts strove with all their might and cunning to end his life, but to the astonishment of all – perhaps the boy himself more than any other – his terrible journey ended not in death but in a victory. He survived in the face of impossible odds – forbidding cold, desperate hunger, wild animals and wilder, crueler youths – and was given swift care of his wounds. He lost a portion of one leg to his injuries and grieved the loss as any able-bodied youth might have done, but surely that was a small price to pay to keep his bird-girl like a queen for the rest of her life._

_The promised, seemingly incalculable riches were provided, and as the boy healed he dreamed and sketched the wonders he would create for his bird-girl upon his return. His reward for survival included a new home of his very own, and so he began by choosing a house he thought she might love. He knew his bird-girl cherished wild places and freedom so he chose for her a remote house in the heart of a wildwood; a nest he could feather with every imaginable comfort and from which she could fly away as often as she pleased, to savor her independence and solitude._

_He returned to his village at last, hobbling and very weak but keeping himself upright with the aid of a cane, and he could barely breathe for the anticipation. He had brought friends for his girl; gentle mute servants who cared for him and would adore her in turn and a merry little pony to draw the carriage he would shortly provide for her. Maidens rode ponies in the ancient tales the boy loved so well, and he fancied he might even make a present of the pony if his bird-girl so wished, so she could ride through the woods like a fairy queen, her black hair unfurling like a banner behind her._

_A crowd was assembled to welcome the boy home, but he looked past the sea of faces for a black braid and silver eyes and skin the color of a mourning dove's breast. There were many similar-complected girls at the gathering, for the boy's victory meant a year's worth of extra nourishment for his entire village and none were ungrateful, but only one stood out amid the crowd: a face radiant as the moon itself. There was his bird-girl on the fringe of the crowd, her silver eyes wide and her mouth open in what was surely shock or horror._

_The boy's heart sank. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to leap from the platform and barrel through the crowd to throw himself at his bird-girl's feet, to hug her limber legs as he wept upon her knees and kissed her boots, but he knew he would manage barely ten paces before falling face-down in the dirt, a cripple and a laughingstock, and in any case, he was clearly no prize for such a fine girl. He had been a poor prospect before, he knew all too well, but now he was weak and maimed and haunted by living nightmares. His beloved – a girl who had rarely even met his eyes before – would surely have no interest in tending a broken boy for the rest of her days. She would not open her arms to him nor freely offer him kisses, and she would surely never welcome him to her bed._

* * *

"Stupid, shallow, _selfish_ girl," I mutter viciously, hugging Peeta so hard that he gasps. "If she was worth the boy's affections she would have run to the train to meet him with her arms wide open.

"I would have caught you before you fell," I whisper, rubbing my cheek against his chest. "I would have held you so tightly and kissed your curls, and then kissed and kissed and kissed what remained of your poor leg."

"Oh Katniss," he moans against my forehead. "Sweet Katniss, there was more to it than that."

* * *

_Were he to propose marriage as he had dreamt all this while, his bird-girl would be obliged to accept him simply because of his wealth, for the sake of her family, and this thought upset the boy more than all the rest. He didn't want a servant – a girl who came to him reluctantly, even resentfully, out of desperation for food and a fire and a warm bed at night – he wanted a wife, to cherish and be cherished by in turn. He wanted to kiss her little hands and feet, to plait her hair in braid-coils and thread them with every flower of the woods, to carry her to bed and love every inch of her precious body with every inch of his own. He wanted children –_ their _children; black-haired daughters and yellow-haired sons with silver eyes and starlight voices – so badly that his heart cracked a little at every thought of them; at the sheer weight of his longing._

 _His beloved would want none of that, he knew, but he wanted no other girl and could not –_ would _not – banish her from his heart, so the boy set out to become a groom worthy of his bird-girl. He carefully furnished his home –_ her _home, he called it, in which he was naught but the caretaker – with things that reminded him of his girl, filling every nook and cranny with scents and colors and textures he imagined she might love, and in the construction of this nest the boy slowly grew strong and healthy once more._

_He was a fair cook already but he became a better one for her sake, enhancing his skills with copious study and practice, for he knew his bird-girl had been hungry – hungrier than he had ever been, even in the most desperate hour of his terrible journey – for most of her life and he intended to feast her on the very best for the rest of her days. His greatest love and care went into the preparation of her pantry: a very haven of foodstuffs, both simple and luxurious, and he created warm golden places throughout the house for her to eat in. He even sang a little in his inferior voice as summer turned to autumn and he preserved the bounty of his overgrown garden in little jars to share with his bird-girl one day. There was an apple tree in his garden, older than his family's and producing the most magical fruit he had ever tasted, and the boy recalled, amid fond blushes, his childish dreams of making an apple-tree home with his bird-girl. He wondered if she would climb its branches to pluck the choicest fruits and if he might follow her – slowly, of course, and not nearly so high up – to catch at her fleet legs and steal sweet-tart kisses from her lips._

_Such love and care devoted the hopeful boy, down to his beloved's clothing and coverlets. He would propose at the end of autumn, he had resolved, for he could not wait an hour longer, and even if she refused him he would have the relief of at last laying his heart bare before her, but first there was one final trial to weather. A final leg of his terrible journey; one last trip, he thought, to the lavish evil place that had cost him his leg and granted him a fortune, and upon his return he would pour out his heart to his bird-girl and, if luck was with him, win a winter bride._

_Indeed, as he set off on his journey, robed in a white bearskin against the cold, the boy's heart was so swollen with love and longing that he could scarcely bear the separation. He began counting down the hours until his return, when he would sweep up his bird-girl and wrap her in furs, then carry her away to their woodland home in his fine new sleigh and kiss her little feet as she warmed herself at the fireside._

_But there was danger lurking that the boy could not have anticipated, for that final journey brought him to the frigid heart of the kingdom of the Trolls._

* * *

I start against Peeta, jarred by these words into the realization that this might, in fact, be a fairy tale after all. Trolls have no place in modern-day Panem but they're common as mushrooms in stories such as these. In Seam tales, like the ones Granny Ashpet told my father, trolls are gray-skinned, sharp-toothed, stringy-haired creatures who lurk in watery places and pull unwary children to their death, and in Peeta's Merchant tales they're equally unpleasant: stout, hairy, red-eyed creatures who dwell in mountains and caves and viciously guard their stolen treasures with heavy spiked clubs.

* * *

_These Trolls were a deceptive breed whose bizarre exterior and frivolous manner concealed a greedy, thoughtless, even cruel nature. As a whole they were captivated by the gentle baker's son, as with the latest style of dress, but there was one among them – a powerful Troll with both wealth and position – who meant him great harm and would not hesitate to act accordingly, should the opportunity arise. But worse still: this ill will was not limited to the boy himself. If he persisted in pursuing his bird-bride, he learned, danger would befall both himself and his beloved, perhaps even their families. There were rules he must follow; a condition which must be kept till this Troll's dark eye fell on a new victim, and even then the boy would live in continual fear that another wicked noble might take an interest in his fate, and this time there would be no hesitation, no rules or conditions for his protection._

_The boy lay beneath his bearskin and wept harder than he had ever wept in his life; harder even than when he had been set on his doomed journey, till he made himself sick with weeping. All his struggles and sorrows had been for naught: he had a palace fit for the girl of his dreams but he would return to it alone and remain thus forever. He could not give her the beautiful home he had prepared with such care and love, not if he wished to spare her harm, and wedding her was now wholly out of the question. While he had always expected that she would refuse his hand, he was heartbroken that he could not even ask – could not even speak his love aloud to her – and he lay for some time in a stupor of grief, till comfort arrived in the unlikeliest of forms._

_The boy had a mentor for his journey, a gruff man whose filthy exterior and boorish manner concealed countless sorrows and a cunning mind, sharpened by time and grief to a razor's edge. This man had lost his own sweetheart, and his entire family besides, to the wrath of the Trolls, and he would not see the same horror visited upon the gentle baker's son, nor would he leave the boy to the hollow safety of a life without his bird-girl. It was he who had proposed the condition for the boy's preservation and as such he explained to the boy how he might conduct a slow and careful courtship within the boundaries of that condition, without arousing the interest of the Trolls. He had waited eleven long years already for his sweetheart; if he could be patient for the space of one year, his mentor said, till summer came round again and another youth set out on the terrible journey, there was a very good chance his gentle spirit would be forgotten in the face of more exciting prospects and he could love his bird-girl in safety – or rather, as much safety as might be enjoyed in a land under constant threat from Trolls and their white-armored snow guards._

_The boy thought of his beloved and what he had learned of taming birds, and his mind was overflowing with plans long before he set foot in his village once more. He would love his bird-girl in a manner that the Trolls would not recognize: with patience and compassion, and if he was very lucky indeed, his breadcrumbs would win her trust and slowly, ever so slowly, her precious heart…_

* * *

Peeta trails off, his lips moving sleepily against my forehead, but my chest is tight with anticipation for the end of his story. The fire still crackles on the hearth but its flames burn much lower; it must be midnight at the very least. "So what did he do?" I ask. "What was his plan to win his bird-girl?"

His mouth presses my skin in a soft, albeit deliberate kiss. "To love her," he replies, his voice rough from the past hours of spinning his tale. "To do all – give all – that he would if she were his sweetheart or even his wife, but without expectation of winning her heart or even her good opinion."

"Love is not an expectation," I tell him quietly. "It doesn't cease to be simply because it isn't returned."

He lifts his head a little, his eyes fluttering open. "That's true," he whispers. "So much truer than you know."

"I think I might know a little bit about it," I counter softly and tug him back down to pillow my face on his chest once more.

"Oh Katniss," he sighs, raising a hand to stroke my braids. "What's to become of us?"

"There's more to your tale," I murmur, nuzzling my way up to burrow into the curve of his neck. "I know there is. Your bird-girl won't be oblivious to your love forever, and once she discovers it I think she'll tear the world apart to be with you. She'll kiss you to pieces and love you senseless; every last precious inch of you – and protect you with every fiber of her being."

He gives a soft, low moan; a mournful hum against my lips. "I think I'd like that," he whispers. "I'm not sure I'd _survive_ it, but I think I'd like it."

"You'll survive it," I promise. "You'll live and thrive and be loved to distraction, spending whole days in bed that lead to children by the bucketload."

He sighs at this prospect; a deep, drowsy, luxuriant sound of pleasure. "I'd _love_ that," he murmurs. "Do you think she'd like to have twins?"

I think of twin fawns in my belly, happily stretching and turning to bask in their father's radiant warmth as I lie against him, and of two perfect human babes in my arms, one rosy-cheeked and golden as the sun and the other dusky as a mourning dove and silver as the moon. I wonder for the first time if the Morning and Evening Star are not one and the same but the twin offspring of the very first eclipse of their celestial parents: a black-haired daughter and a yellow-haired son with silver eyes and starlight voices.

"Yes," I confess against my beloved's throat. "I think she'd love to have twins."

I doze off within moments, nestled tightly into the crooks and hollows of Peeta's strong body, and sink into a dark, silent, exquisite slumber, lulled by his steady pulse and slow, soft breaths. I'm on the cusp of a dream; a sweet dream, I think, standing on the edge of a frosty meadow just before sunrise, when I feel Peeta ease my arm off his chest and begin to sit up.

"No," I protest, a sleep-slurred groan, and grab a blind handful of his shirt to pull him down again. "Don't go."

"I'm not going anywhere, little nestling," he whispers and kisses the top of my head, in the parting between my braids. "I just need to take my leg off."

I open bleary eyes with a whimper of dismay – there's barely enough firelight to see him by, but I'm not concerned with seeing – and reach across to his right thigh, fumbling my way down its firm length to the broad curve of his knee and below, to the juncture of prosthesis and flesh. Even through the flannel of his pajama trousers the seam is distinguishable, with cold, unyielding plastic below.

I've never known Peeta to take off his prosthesis before. I've never known if he can or if the Capitol doctors cruelly fused the artificial limb to his flesh while he slept on their operating table. "What's wrong?" I puzzle. "Was I hurting you?"

"Not at all," he soothes, covering my hand with his and giving a reassuring squeeze. "It just rubs and pinches if I leave it on all night. I'd be okay if I did," he adds quickly, "just a little sore. And I'll put it on again before you wake up, so you won't have to see."

He moves my hand over to rest on his hip and shucks up his trouser leg. There's a muffled popping sound and a groan of relief, then he eases his arm out from under the coverlet and reaches away to set something down. " _So_ much better," he sighs, curling his arm around me again, but I slide my hand back down his thigh and over his knee to find an empty trouser leg beneath.

Startled, I cry out and fumble frantically for what was there just a moment ago, grasping a fistful of hollow flannel where there had been a sturdy – if artificial – limb before. "Shh, little sweetheart," Peeta murmurs, covering my hand with his again. "It's okay. I'm sorry for startling you. I thought I could do it without waking you up."

Shaking off his gentle grasp, I tug up his trouser leg till I find the cuff and slip my hand inside, burrowing upward till I touch warm skin: a blunt knob of smooth skin and bone, just below the knee.

Peeta gasps – a ragged, shaken sound – but he doesn't pull my hand away.

I curl my palm around this precious remnant of his sturdy lower leg and wonder how something so terrible and heartbreaking can feel so _beautiful_. I want to rub my face against it, to see if the skin is as soft as his cheek, and cover it with lingering kisses. I want to slip off his trousers and cradle the whole limb in my forearms and kiss the length and breadth of it over and over and over again, so he knows how strong and lovely this hidden, broken part of him truly is.

I can't speak for his sweetheart but I doubt she'd feel the same. In fact, I don't ever want her to have the opportunity to see and touch this part of him.

"Mine," I grunt sleepily, easing my hand behind his knee to better cradle the stump, and I smooth my thumb over the tender skin in small, soft circles.

"Yours, little songbird," whispers Peeta's voice through the drowsy darkness. His warm hand covers my own, easing the fingers open ever so slightly as his leg sinks deeper into the curve of my palm.

" _Always and entirely yours._ "

* * *

_It's twilight, perhaps an hour before dawn, and I am walking by the lake with a woman. At a glance she could be my twin: the same height, same black hair, same olive skin; the color of a mourning dove's belly. But there are threads of silver in her braid and her nose hooks a little at the end, and her eyes are green; the green-gold of a cougar's._

_It's my aunt Laurel; my father's sister, who died just after she was born. She's short, like me, because of Grandpa Asa and she inherited his nose to boot, but she's every bit as beautiful as Granny Ashpet and as familiar as my own father. Her head is crowned with antlers and acorns and sprigs of fresh pine._

_It's neither unsettling nor particularly surprising to see her here, this ghost of a woman who never really existed._ She went to the woods, _Granny Ashpet told my father when the silent bundle of baby disappeared from her arms, and by the time he understood that meant she'd been buried there, he wasn't quite sure he believed it. Every now and again he claimed he heard a little girl's laughter in the woods, though_ I _never could, and the day that Granny Ashpet died, he swore there were child's footprints in the forest floor beside her body; the size Laurel's feet would have been._

_I often ached to have an aunt, like Merchants and the lucky Seam families who see more than one child survive to adulthood, and even more so after my father died, taking with him our rich Everdeen heritage of songs and laughter and fairytales and leaving us with our grief-hollowed mother; a faded shell of a Merchant beauty with no kin and few skills to her name, who forgot how to live when her husband died. Aunt Laurel would have been everything my mother was not – confident, practical, and merry in turns – and I am both gladdened and comforted by her presence._

_There is a strange light illumining our faces in the dimness; a hushed white glow, like sunlight through fog, that seems to be coming from_ me _. I look down at myself to find a pearl at my throat, bright as the evening star on a silver chain, and a gown of white doeskin, as soft as velvet beneath my fingers, enrobing my slender body. Granny Ashpet's bridal doeskins. I am dressed as a bride; an Everdeen bride, with my hair braided up around the crown of my head._

_Aunt Laurel smiles and brings her hands to my hair, methodically unplaiting the neat braid with small, deft fingers. "The woods loves you, little Katniss," she says as she works, and the words are at once like a sigh and a song. "The woods and everything in it."_

_When she's finished, she takes a comb from her belt and runs it through my hair, again and again and again, till it hangs about my shoulders like a sleek black shawl. My hair is longer and thicker than I've ever seen; the longest strands nearly brush my waist._

" _The feast is prepared," she says, touching my cheek, and she gestures to an apple tree just ahead of us, in a patch of open ground at the edge of the woods. The air about us is crisp and cool; the cusp of spring, I think, but the branches are already tipped with tiny buds, and beneath the tree is a small pot of burning coals and a thick white fur, spread like a blanket with a platter of food at its center. Bread and honey and wine: a wealthy man's toasting meal, though I've never seen one before._

 _Bread signifies sustenance and survival, and for most Seam couples – who are lucky to afford one good loaf for their nuptials – this is more than sufficient to be wed over, especially when the other elements are more ceremonial than anything else. But for those who_ can _afford it, the honey symbolizes sweetness in the union to come and the wine, strength. When the bread has been toasted and the promises made, the bride dips her piece in honey and feeds it to the groom and the groom does the same with the wine, raising his portion of bread to her lips. Once the bread has been exchanged they share a kiss, their first as husband and wife, and distribute the remaining bread and honey and wine amongst their kin and, if any remains, the other guests._

_I wonder whose toasting this is, set in a lonely, wild place in the dim hour before dawn, without guests or songs or fine presents._

" _And here is your bridegroom," Aunt Laurel whispers, and I follow her gaze to the woods where the first ray of sunrise is threading through the trees. A brave, slender ray of pure gold, stretching toward us like a lover's hand._

_I gasp, a shallow, shuddering sob, as though she has torn my heart from my breast with her cruel, quiet words. "He is not mine," I whisper, and angry tears burn in my eyes._

" _Not yours, catkin?" she replies, her lips curving in an echo of my father's beloved smile, and her cougar-eyes are gentle. "Don't you see? His very light is his love for you, and you in your turn are radiant with it."_

_I look down at myself once more, this time with surprise. The jewel at my throat glows with the silver light inherent to such a treasure, and Granny Ashpet's doeskins are so pale and perfect that I suspect they would shine in full darkness, but my dusky skin has a luminescence all its own, like crow's feathers and dewdrops and dragonflies' wings._

Like the moon, _I think. Her light is not her own; they taught us this in school, but I've never thought about how true that is in the context of my father's folktale. After all, no self-respecting huntress, let alone a stealthy, expert one like the moon, would illuminate her own path; not even in the pursuit of star-game. The moon is a cold gray rock, remote and lifeless and lonely in the starry darkness._

_It's the light of the sun – a hot golden star; always on fire but never burning up – that brings her to life; that makes her glow. The sun, who loves her with the very might that melts away winter and coaxes green shoots from the soil. Through the light of his love, she becomes beautiful. Her plain, dull face shines like a flawless pearl and inspires countless lovers and poets and tales._

_The beams of sunrise slowly condense into the form of a young man, strong and stocky and so beloved that I have to ground my feet in the earth to keep from running to him. He looks at me for a long moment, then he goes to the toasting place beneath the apple tree and kneels carefully on the fur. His right hand is full of katniss blossoms and his left red satin ribbons._

" _He waits for you beneath the apple tree," Aunt Laurel says, stroking her fingers through the ends of my hair as I gaze at the boy with the sort of hunger that claws its way out of your stomach, only this hunger throbs everywhere_ but _my stomach. My eyes, my throat, my heart; even my belly, deep between my hipbones. Every part of me wants –_ needs _– this boy; this boy who is not, nor can ever be, mine._

" _There he found you," she goes on, "there he sustained and comforted you, and there he will awaken you. He will thread your braids with blossoms and seed your womb with stars."_

 _At these words the hunger in my belly turns to heat; a damp, heavy ache of emptiness, like fresh soil after the first spring rain, before it has been tilled and planted with seed. Pregnant with hope and potential but_ hollow _; void of shoots and sprouts and life._

 _Suddenly the boy cries out "Enough!" and I flinch and turn away, overwhelmed by the urge to weep. I knew better than to look at this boy with longing, to want desperately those things I can never have…and then Aunt Laurel makes a small, chastened sound and I realize he was talking to_ her.

_The boy is on his feet now and approaching us, and his curls are the color of sunrise. "Do not force the bud," he tells my aunt solemnly. "A katniss blossom has only three petals to guard its heart and will close them all the tighter for it."_

_Then he reaches out a hand to me. "Come with me, little mourning dove," he bids gently, and his hand is palm-up and open, as though he seeks to feed or tame a wild creature. A clear indication that no harm is intended. "Come for a meal and warmth by my fire," he says, "and only if you wish."_

_I raise a hand to rest in his and our contrast is startling. My small dark hand in his broad pale one resembles nothing so much as a brave spring peeper sunning itself on a slab of rosy stone, but the boy only smiles and dips his head to press a little kiss to my fingers. He draws me toward the apple tree and I follow him, but not for food or the warmth of furs and coal-fire. All the warmth I could ever want resides in one strong palm and the bread I desire, the honey and wine, is the boy himself, not this feast he prepared for another._

_I sink onto the white fur in a soft sigh of doeskin and unbound hair and do not refuse as those strong hands toast a generous piece of bread over the coals, then dip it in both the honey and wine in turn and bring it at last to my lips. The wine is warm and rich with spices;_ holiday-wine, _I think,_ made with cider, _and the bread beneath it is dense and hearty and sweet with raisins. The honey tastes of purple clover and apple blossoms; of a summer afternoon beneath a flowering tree, and the sun bathing me between the branches with his dusty golden light._

 _The sun is a boy; a stocky gentle boy with golden curls and bright blue eyes, who regards me with such tenderness that my heart presses against my breastbone in furious determination, like a mousekin against a boulder placed over its burrow; as desperate for freedom and as futile in its efforts._ Let me out, let me out, _it whimpers._ Out of this dark, lonely place and into the nest of his hands.

" _What of your bride?"_ _I ask the boy, who has not spoken since we sat down together, nor touched me since he withdrew his hand from mine to prepare the bread for me. "Will she not be angry that you served her feast to another?"_

" _The feast is prepared," the boy says cryptically, "and now the bride has come. But the hour is far too early."_

_I look up in surprise and horror, expecting to see another black-haired girl nearby, perhaps standing over us in a jealous fury. But there is no one else here; no black-haired bride, not even Aunt Laurel. The sun-boy and I are alone at our feast._

" _I don't understand," I puzzle, and he replies gently, "And that is why. The soil has been watered and the dove given her bread, but a bud cannot be forced. There is a season for everything," he says sadly, "and I could not claim my bride now, even if she desired me._

" _Though I wish with all my heart that it were not so,"_ _he goes on, and his voice is sadder still. He catches up a handful of my hair and brings it to his face, rubbing his cheek against the strands with a mournful groan._ _"That this silk were mine to plait and wind and seal with signs of my love," he whispers._

 _He loves another black-haired girl, I know, and not me. His longing is for_ her _hair in his hands, not mine._

_My breastbone crumbles with a sound like sleigh bells and I bring his left hand to my chest, to the hollow between my small breasts, to catch my heart before it flies away. "It is yours," I tell him softly. "I am yours."_

_The boy curls his fingers against me and closes his eyes in what might be pain or bliss, and my eyes are drawn to his wrist. To the scrap of faded red cloth; the precious red plaid cotton that binds him to his girl. The silver-eyed bird-girl, named for a white flower, with a voice like starlight, for whom he labored and wept when he was just a child._

_I cannot win him away from her, nor would I wish to._

_I encircle his wrist with both hands and trace the hateful scrap of cloth with my thumbs. "Set me as a seal," I plead, my mind full of lonely January mornings and discarded red ribbons, and wonder why there are tears in my eyes. "Upon your arm and upon your heart."_

_The boy opens his eyes to reveal tears of his own but they are joyous ones, not sorrowful. "I have already," he whispers, and cups my cheek with his free hand. "Long ago."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the best of my knowledge, the Mellark bridal braid tradition is my own invention. I've snooped a little to see whether anything like this already exists and stumbled across the _oczepiny_ , an "unveiling and capping" ceremony common among Polish brides to this day. The bride's veil (historically a wreath or garland) is exchanged for a matron's cap, representing her passage into the ranks of married women, and her hair might also be unbraided and/or cut short as part of the ceremony. In a manner not unlike the Mellark bridal braids, a Polish bridal headdress might include colorful ribbons, flowers, feathers, and beads. (See _Polish-American Folklore_ by Deborah Silverman for more details on the _oczepiny_ and other Polish wedding traditions!)
> 
> I also came across a medieval Russian bridal tradition of "hair winding" or _okruchivanie_ , where the bride's single braid is unplaited, combed out, and replaited into two braids as a symbol of her married state. Incidentally, a special round loaf of bread was sliced and distributed by a bridesmaid at this time, which coincides neatly with the toastings of District Twelve. (If you're curious, there are oodles of additional details on this and other fascinating nuptial rites – including reenactment hints, a la SCA – on the webpage "A Russian Wedding" by Paul W. Goldschmidt.)
> 
> If you're having difficulty visualizing the braid-coils/bridal braids, try googling the medieval hairstyle known as **ramshorns**. I had a rough time finding a visual myself – I had a great mental image but no picture to use as a reference – but medieval maestro **justadram** kindly provided the terminology to set me in the right direction! A million thanks, brilliant friend!
> 
> This chapter contains copious Song of Solomon references, quotes, and adaptations thereof. I was going to list them all here but it made my Author's Note several pages long, so I'm putting them over on my Tumblr (porchwood) instead, for anyone who's interested. I drew from multiple different translations to get the phrasing I preferred and am justifying it with the theory that in a dystopia like Panem, the little that people recall of Scripture would necessarily be cobbled together from a variety of oral traditions.
> 
> The longer I work on When the Moon, the more Song of Solomon I see in it, from the Shulamite being "dark, but lovely" to her cry to "Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh/comfort me with apples…!" to "The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir [alt. pine]" (I nearly fell over when I stumbled across that one!). Not to mention the Shulamite's lament: "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not." So there may, perhaps, be Song of Solomon references in future chapters, though I hope they come across as appropriate and not heavy-handed.
> 
> Closing on a lighter note: I came up with the concept of the toasting meal of bread, honey, and wine expressly for When the Moon/my personal headcanon but I also snuck it into my modern!Everlark drabble **Wedded Bliss** (which also features Marko/Prim!), so if you're disappointed that you didn't get to see Peeta and Katniss share their nuptial meal in this chapter's dream sequence, go check out that fic. (If you've read it already, you may have recognized the reference in this chapter to a particularly beloved breakfast pie.)
> 
> Oh, and Katniss's narrative remark: "I'm starting to wonder what else Prim hasn't been telling me since I moved out here" is a wink to **Torchlight** , my When the Mooniverse parallel Marko/Prim (and to a lesser extent, Janek/Alys) oneshot, where things are very much changing and Prim is planning to deliberately keep them from her sister.
> 
> Last but not least: if you've read _East_ , Edith Pattou's lush and lengthy retelling of "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," you may recall that the quote that heads this chapter, while wholly appropriate to Katniss in her present situation, is taken from the Troll Queen's narrative. Just a little whisper of foreshadowing for anyone who's interested. ;)


	14. Appetites and Awakenings (Part One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was too long for AO3 to allow as one so I had to split it into two. :( Sorry for any confusion!

_Sometimes she would find herself lulled by his steady breathing,_  
_the warmth of his coat and the gentle musky smell of bear._  
_She would drift into sleep and dream of a prince, young and handsome._  
_~ East of the Sun, West of the Moon,_ retold by Jackie Morris

 _I slept but my heart was awake._  
_Listen! My beloved is knocking…  
_ _~Song of Solomon 5:2a (NIV)_

I wake as I always have since coming to this house: alone in my enormous bed, curled on my side, tucked snugly beneath soft sheets and thick furs, and though I sigh a little at the realization, I'm not surprised, nor even especially disappointed. This burrow of dark wood and deerskin is my bed and I belong in it. At some point in the night Peeta brought me up here and tucked me in, no doubt thinking of my comfort. Surely if we'd slept all night in front of the living room fire, even with an abundance of pillows and fur coverlets – _and_ , I recall with a bright flush across the apples of my cheeks, _the heat and cushion of each other's body_ – we'd wake with stiff backs and crooks in our necks. Always-considerate Peeta wanted me to wake in comfort; he might even have waited to bring me here till he got up to start the morning's baking. To be sure, my body remembers the sweet warmth of his body between the furs as though it was taken away only a moment ago.

I perk up a little at the thought. The sky outside my window is catkin-silver; it's still relatively early, and Peeta might very well have put me in bed simply because he needed to get up and didn't want to leave me alone in our nest of fire-warmed furs.

There's a hushed scraping sound from outside my window – a shovel cutting through snow – and I smile slowly. Maybe Peeta simply needed his bearskin and gently relocated the fox kit who was sleeping on it.

My smile sprawls wide and I bury my face deep in deerskin with an elated little giggle.

I love him. I love him. _I love him._

I remind myself firmly, much like a scolding parent who isn't actually upset in the least with their errant child, that I absolutely can't continue to think, let alone act, like this. Peeta will catch on eventually – with his keen mind, sooner rather than later – and then all the horrors I've imagined, as well as countless others that I haven't, will ensue, crumbling to pieces this bliss I've come to savor; even devour, like steaming spoonfuls of ginger cake soaked with custard.

It's utterly imperative that I stop grinning like an idiot at the merest thought of Peeta Mellark. If I have any sense remaining, I'll go back to sleep for another hour or two and meet him downstairs for breakfast like every other morning.

I throw back the covers and sit up, bright-eyed and eager as a fledgling.

I glance briefly at my companion's side of the bed, curious whether he slept here without me and enjoyed the sweets I left for him, and catch my breath at the sight of his pillow – the rabbit-skin one I made for him and sealed with a sweetheart ribbon on New Year's night. At its center sits the perfect bird's nest I found on New Year's Eve and presented with a cargo of golden honey-eggs, but this morning it holds a sleek black tail feather, iridescent even in the low light from the fire. A blackbird's feather, likelier than not, though it could just as easily have come from a mockingjay. After all, my companion has proven himself beloved of the woods and in possession of its rarest and loveliest treasures.

 _Don't get your hopes up,_ I warned him. _I think this one is just a common blackbird._

 _A black bird she is indeed,_ he agreed. _I've never seen her like, let alone so close, but I think she might be a mockingjay._

My breath stills in a gasp as one last shred of reason adamantly insists that what I'm imagining is complete and utter madness. I know beyond all doubt that Peeta is not my night companion and the absolute proof of it lies in the absence of my red ribbon yesterday. When I gave him the antlers he put on the ribbon I'd tied around them almost immediately, and that wasn't even a proper New Year's ribbon. If he'd received any such token from me on the holiday itself he would have been wearing it tied round his sleeve at breakfast yesterday, sweetheart or no.

Oh, _why_ didn't I give him a proper ribbon on New Year's? Why didn't I tie one around that stupid rabbit-skin muffler like I did with my companion's pillow? Peeta might even have tied it on right there at the fireside, for me to touch and maybe even press with a quick, shy kiss.

Why, oh _why_ didn't I claim a sweetheart's kiss for myself?

I envision Peeta bending to brush his soft, sweet mouth against mine and am certain my heart cracks open with grief.

I focus stubbornly on the black feather in its nest and recall my idea of using the little twig-bowl as a place to leave future treats for my companion. I did nothing to communicate this to him, save for presenting the nest on New Year's Eve with a festive cargo of honey-buttons, but he must share that intention because he's left a present there himself; another treasure, no less precious than the ribbon-wrapped orange and the vibrant wintergreen sprig.

I reach across to his pillow – it feels daring; forbidden, almost, to touch his side of our bed while I'm still in my own – and take the silky feather between my fingers, drawing it to my face for a closer look. It's exactly the sort of present my mysterious woods-beloved companion – not Peeta – would give me.

Scooting out of bed, I press a kiss to the feather and tuck it away in my drawer of precious things alongside the wintergreen sprig and the orange, which I decide to split with my companion tonight, peel and all. _Perhaps my visitor is a bird himself,_ I think, a little madly, _wooed by my newfound gentleness in the woods, and the feather is his own._ Oranges are very precious, of course, but many birds love fruit, peels and rinds and all, and I resolve to ask Peeta if he's found one that prefers oranges yet. There's no doubt in my mind that he's tried it already.

"We'd make a fine pair," I tell my absent companion as I collect the nest from his pillow and carry it to my dresser-top to await this evening's treat. "Two lonely blackbirds sharing an orange and a nest."

I chuckle at the thought. I'm not truly lonely, of course, not living here with Peeta and Pollux and Lavinia, not to mention little Rye and the chipmunk and all the birds drawn in by Peeta's gentleness and generosity, but it makes a ridiculous amount of sense for my companion to be a wild creature himself, and a bird could find his way to my bed much easier than a lumbering white bear, and with a wintergreen sprig in his beak besides.

I wonder if my bird-companion has lost his sweetheart too. My father told me stories of birds devoting themselves to stone sculptures, a pretty pleasure-boat with a swan-shaped prow, and even a school of minnows, bringing seeds and insects to the water's edge out of confusion, misguided love, or grief.

"Perhaps we could feather this nest together," I muse, only half-joking, as I trace the edge of the twig-bowl with a fingertip. "I'll never be with my sweetheart either. We could fill this nest with speckled pebbles, and maybe if we kept it warm enough, little black and gold nestlings would hatch out, with voices like starlight."

 _Don't be silly, Katniss,_ echoes a chiding voice in my mind. _It would take the heat of the sun itself to hatch anything from pebbles, speckled or otherwise._

I turn away from the dresser with a weak laugh. Lavinia's laid out clothes for me already and I have a hand on the sweater when I become aware of the snow-shoveling sounds once more and go to the window instead, peering down in search of the source. In the dim light I can just make out a bulky white blue-capped form on the edge of the garden, shovel in hand, scooping and hefting heaps of something even whiter. Peeta's cutting a snow path, but not a really necessary one – to the woodpile, the stable, or even the garden bench. He's shoveling the path to the woods: the path I take most often on my hunting trips.

The path no one but me really needs.

I love him.

I run headlong down the stairs in my festive New Year's nightgown, pausing just long enough to clamber barefoot into my fleece-lined boots, though not to tie more than a quick, cursory bow with the laces, and barrel outside, sprinting through the fresh snow like a hare. I don't slow down as I approach and provoke a muffled, satisfying " _Oof!_ " as I broadside Peeta and topple us both into the snow.

We crumple together in a breathless heap of white fur and beribboned black braids, chickadee-patterned flannel and soft corduroy trousers and heavy, snow-packed boots. For an eternity of moments all I want to do is luxuriate in a faceful of frosty bearskin, a radiant cloud of boy-musk and a mouthwatering whiff of yeast, but I push through the bliss, determined, and scramble up to pin my quarry with eager little paws on either brawny shoulder and fierce strong thighs splayed bare across the fur to trap his powerful lower body.

_Mine._

_Yours, little songbird,_ answers an exquisite wisp of a fireside dream. _Always and entirely yours._

I gaze down at a wide-eyed mismatch of outerwear: a jaunty crested stocking cap patterned to resemble a blue jay's plumage, with two fat yellow curls peeping out on one side; a luminous coat of thick white fur, such as a prince would wear in a winter tale – and a rabbit-skin muffler, sewn by a wild huntress, wrapped snugly around everything from nose bridge down to collarbones. What lies beneath me might barely be human but for a pair of wheat-pale eyebrows and two over-bright blue eyes, lashed about with golden winter grasses.

My mouthless quarry gasps beneath me – from startlement, surely; my weight is hardly sufficient to put any sort of pressure on his precious lungs – and I pounce, covering everything I can reach with merry kit-kisses and blissful beak-nuzzles. A blue-crested forehead and black-strapped cheeks; a lush, silky expanse of panting gray-brown rabbit fur and dense goose down, concealing a hundred delights – then, impatient and ravenous, I tug down the fur barrier with greedy paws and kiss nose, cheeks, and chin, all flushed and warm and delicious with both boy-musk and rabbit-musk, and even duck my head to nuzzle eagerly at his throat and the tender underside of his jaw.

Silky black ropes woven and wound with scarlet fall in my face and I toss them out of the way. _So much to kiss,_ I think giddily, _even with lips forbidden me,_ and at a thought I scoot back up to rub my nose and cheekbone against that soft, sweet mouth, back and forth again. A kit's kiss, followed by a daring vixen's: a firm, fierce poke of pursed lips in the shallow indent at one corner of his mouth.

I grin down at my gaping sweetheart and do it all over again, this time in gosling-fashion, with quick happy beak-pecks everywhere, finishing with a giddy patter of peep-like kisses deposited squarely on the end of his nose before sitting up and triumphantly regarding my prize.

_Mine. Mine. Mine._

_Always, always, always._

"Greedy gosling," Peeta whispers, and his voice is thinner than a shadow. His eyes are dazed and dreamlike, and for a moment I wonder whether either of us is actually awake or even really here – but yes, the air is sharp and pure as ice against my face and my thighs are peppered with goosebumps on the sides not bolstered by bearskin, and the world is a gasping, blue-eyed cloud of flushed pink skin and sweet boy-musk and downy milkweed lashes.

"Greedy gosling," he tries again; a little stronger, but only just. "What are you doing out of your nest? I-I haven't even started your breakfast yet."

"I don't want breakfast," I inform him. "Not yet. I just want you."

His eyes go, somehow, wider still. "Well," he says, a little hoarsely, "here I am."

Something crackles and flares in my heart; a fresh pine branch igniting with the love already kindled there and adding to the radiant heat of its glow.

Peeta spreads his arms in a gesture of surrender – I'm still pinning his torso firmly but he could throw me off with very little effort – and asks softly, "Now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?"

I consider this quite seriously for a moment. I want to wrap him up in my fox fur coverlet beside the living room fire and kiss the chill from his nose and cheeks. I want to take his hand and lead him upstairs to my den of deerskin and down, where we'll burrow together like newborn mousekins, all soft bare skin and eyes closed tightly. I want to sit in his lap, legs knotted around his waist, and toy with his curls, giggling as my small fingers make them bounce and spring back toward his scalp, and finally kiss him squarely on the mouth, right when he least expects it.

I want to roll up his trousers – or better yet, remove them completely – and spend the day lavishing love on what remains of his poor right leg with gentle fingertips and careful, lingering kisses. That much wasn't a dream – the blunt, smooth knob of bone and warm tender skin nestling like a determined, oversized fledgling in the curve of my palm – and I remember all too well Peeta's heartbreaking words about returning home damaged, unworthy of his sweetheart's hand.

_A cripple and a laughingstock. Weak. Maimed. Haunted by living nightmares._

I remember equally well the moment that led to that grief: the glossy wolverine, compact and snarling; his fanged maw closing around Peeta's powerful calf and wrenching viciously. Wolverines have an angled back tooth to help them effectively tear flesh; they explained this – _showed_ this – in the recap and I left the room, crying so hard that I threw up what little was in my stomach.

"I'm going to put you somewhere you can't get hurt," I blurt.

Peeta ventures a small smile and gently brushes a gloved hand against my shivering leg where it brackets his hip. "You've found it, I think," he murmurs. "I can't imagine a safer shelter than beneath my songbird's wings. But maybe we could move it someplace a little warmer?"

I cock my head at him, reluctant to relocate, despite the cold. I like this perch; like my boy safe and snug between my thighs. "What did you have in mind?" I wonder, and Peeta reaches shyly between us to unhook the fastenings on his bearskin.

"Ah," I reply, echoing his smile, and shift a little, scooting back onto his thighs so he can reach all the clasps. Beneath the fur he's still half in his pajamas, with a gray thermal undershirt above his corduroys. "You're hardly outfitted for the weather yourself," I chide lightly, brushing a hand over his ribs, then I tuck in my legs for a moment to let the bearskin fall open and scurry back up to blanket him with my small body.

"Oh, little vixen," he sighs, curling his arms around me and enveloping us both in a dense cocoon of warm white plushness. "How does this suit you?"

"Very well indeed," I reply, burrowing deeply into the crooks and hollows of his body, and press my face into the curve of his neck with a happy whuff of breath. "It's a good day's hunt when straight out of the den you bag a plump, unwitting gander."

Peeta makes a small disgruntled sound; the audible equivalent of a scowl. "Did you just call me 'fat,' Katniss?" he wonders, and I giggle against his throat.

"Well, it sounds ridiculous to describe a gander as 'strong and stocky,' " I reply, leaning up to meet his eyes with a grin. "Did you just admit to being captured unawares by a hungry little vixen?"

"Captured, always," he murmurs, snugging his arms across my back so the bearskin won't fall open behind me, "but unawares, only once. And anyway, I thought you weren't hungry," he says softly.

"Not for breakfast," I tell him, glinting down mischief, and lick my lips. "But foxes love geese, and lonely ganders best of all."

Peeta catches his breath, a quick jerk of his chest against mine. "Do they, now?" he whispers.

"It's a well-known fact," I reply merrily, and dip my face in a playful mock-nip at his throat, making him gasp. "We vixens are small but mighty and our appetites are legendary. You're a goner, lonely gander," I inform him, brushing the tip of my nose against his in a gentle sort of sniff-nuzzle.

"I've known that much for a while," he says, and his voice is more husky than playful. "Do you mean to gobble me up, greedy vixen?"

"Only a little," I answer. His strange somberness is puzzling but hardly off-putting, not when I'm so deeply entrenched in the game. "It's going to be a long winter, and you're a feast of a catch," I explain. "I think I'll tuck you away in the pantry and nibble at you at intervals."

"You'd best start with my beak, then," he advises, and the playfulness is back in his voice but there's something else beneath it now, something tugging and heated in both his voice and his eyes that makes my belly clench. "A lonely gander in the larder promises no end of complaining," he warns softly, "and I might nip at you when you stop by for a bite."

I trace his "beak" with a fingertip, sweeping down the bridge of his nose, around its fleshy base and the oval of his mouth, then sweeping up again on the opposite side. "Can't do it," I tell him cheerfully. "I quite like your beak, I'm afraid, so I think I'll save that for last. I like the idea of you honking away at me till there's nothing left of you but a beak," I tease, "and maybe regular nips are just what I need."

 _You're writing new tales, catkin,_ murmurs my father's voice in my mind, rich with amusement. _The vixen who caught a gander and kept him through the winter – easier to take a bite whenever she grew hungry than to carve him up and store him for the season – and instead she fell in love with his honks and hisses and frightened toothy nips._

"I could manage that," Peeta concedes, to my surprise, "if you'd be so kind as to lie on the floor once you've eaten everything but my beak, so I can still find and nip you without eyes."

"There's no need for that," I assure him. "You can trawl along the floor and nip at my toes like a minnow."

He grins at the thought. "I could nip at your toes now, if you'd like," he says impishly, waggling his brows. "Ganders are especially fond of dusky little vixen-toes, you know, and lonely ganders fondest of all."

I catch my breath in a strange sort of anticipation, a cross between what you feel before tickling fingers descend and a stab of something hot and fierce, like I felt when Peeta briefly sucked on my fingertips beside the fire on New Year's Day. I envision us in bed together and his curly golden head disappearing beneath the covers in search of dusky toes to nip, and suddenly I can't breathe at all.

Peeta must catch on to my discomfort because his air of mischief fades immediately, supplanted by a faint rosy blush. "Or I could do no such thing," he adds quickly. "I could make you a winter's worth of delicious goose-free meals so there would be no need to concern ourselves with nipping each other to death – or a beak."

He mentions the beak almost hopefully, making me suspect that he's as fond of our game as I am and equally reluctant to see it end. I pretend to give his proposal thorough consideration but "It's no good," I tell him at last. "I mean, it's a good try, but this vixen needs her winter gander in the pantry. After all, geese supply down as well as meat and bone and I'm such a very small fox. I want a coat of gander-down to keep out the cold."

"Well, I suppose you could harvest a pinch whenever you come by for your daily nip," Peeta suggests equably.

 _That's good,_ my father says in my mind. _The gander is crafty; bargaining for his life. It'll take far more than a winter's worth of down pinches to make a coat for even the smallest fox, and he'll come up with more shrewd delays as the season wears on. "The down must mature a good six months or it will shrivel when plucked" or "Surely it would be better to let the down grow evenly and harvest it all at once."_

 _And the twist comes in spring,_ he adds, _when you learn that the lonely gander deliberately allowed himself to be captured because he loves the little vixen with all his heart and would rather be eaten by her than live without her._

 _That's wrong, Dad,_ I retort silently, _not to mention ridiculous. The vixen wanted the gander for food and down and so she tracked him and trapped him. He was clumsy and amiable – and yes, silver-tongued when it came to bargaining – and the vixen, who was lonely too, fell hopelessly in love with her quarry, in opposition to every last screaming fiber of her being, and as the winter wore on she made her own delays for neither eating him nor plucking his fine coat. When spring's thaw ensued she despaired, for she must make good on her promise and eat the gander, but how could she devour her beloved?_

 _Little Katniss,_ Granny Ashpet's voice chimes in, _as always, you overlook the obvious. The gander and the vixen love each other and always have, ever since he was a round downy gosling and she a shy and scrawny kit, peering out from the shadows beneath her father's foreleg. She didn't hunt him as a meal but as a mate and he willingly gave himself up to his carnivorous sweetheart, content to be eaten if that was all she could offer him. That winter was for wooing, for wild courtship gifts and shy careful preens and nesting, and the spring that followed was for kits and chicks._

"Goslings," I correct my grandmother out loud, exasperated. "And exactly what sort of mutt-offspring would that union yield? Live-born goslings with silky fur instead of feathers? Downy kits that hatch from eggs?"

"Katniss," interjects Peeta's voice quietly, "what are you talking about?"

I shake my head to clear it and peer down at my boy, whose eyes are soft and bright with something like fascination – no, _wonder_ – and I realize what I just said…and the implications thereof. "A folktale!" I blurt, frantically and a little too loud. "The oldest ones always had people marrying animals and different animal species marrying each other like it was the most natural thing in the world, and somehow they always had babies. Dad told me a few tales like that but I never understood how – _things_ – were supposed to work. How…"

I trail off, hot and mortified beneath Peeta's gaze. He nodded in understanding when I mentioned the folktale but that strange, bright softness still illumines his eyes. "H-How a gander and a vixen could marry," I fumble out. "I was thinking about a tale where that happens –" I neatly sidestep the fact that it was a brand-new tale that I just invented in my head with the help of my dead father and grandmother – "a-and trying to figure out what sort of young they would have."

"Kitlings," he says suddenly. "Downy kits that hatch from eggs."

I frown, thoroughly nonplussed by this response, and he goes on, "Or goslits – your live-born goslings with silky fur instead of feathers. The gander could feed the goslits plants and things and the vixen could nurse the kitlings. They…they could share protective duties," he says, coloring fiercely beneath my gaze, "a-and teaching the babies how to swim and hunt, but…it could work, Katniss," he concludes in a small, soft voice. "It sounds kind of perfect, actually."

I envision myself naked in a broad nest of fur with an armful of downy, freshly hatched kitlings yipping for milk and a lapful of silky newborn goslits peeping for katniss – for tender stalks and leaves and blossoms, maybe a small tuber or two – and have to bite down on my lip to hold back a keening cry. "It does," I whisper. "It sounds _so_ nice."

Peeta steals a hand from my waist to brush my cheek. "We could write that story," he murmurs, and blushes darker still. "I-I mean," he amends quickly, "we both love old tales and I like to draw and paint. We could make a storybook of your folktale for our – for the future," he says.

My mouth drops open, as much in captivation as surprise. Books – books not printed, approved, and issued by the Capitol – are rarer than gold. It wasn't always so, I'm told, but in this day and age if anyone owns a book that didn't originate in the Capitol, likelier than not it's handwritten and hand-bound and precious beyond price, like my family's plant book. Hundreds of years ago, my father said – in much the same manner as he talked about princes and fairies and castles – beautifully illustrated books were common and, impossible as it is to believe now, both accessible and inexpensive. Even a child as poor as I was would have a generous handful of picture-books; secondhand and tattered, perhaps, but all their own nonetheless. Our imaginations took the place of such illustrations, of course, but I always wished that there could have been a picture of my grandmother's cinder-lass namesake in her pretty red dress and matching dance-slippers or my father's wily, winsome, lucky namesake, merry and dashing in his magic boots with a mourning dove on his shoulder and a pail overflowing with gold at his feet.

"That would be _wonderful,_ " I whisper, ignoring for the moment that in order for this to happen, I have to decide how the tale goes and tell it to Peeta, all the while pretending that it's an ancient story that has nothing whatsoever to do with me or my feelings for him. "But it would be so much _work_ –"

"There are few things I would rather devote my time to than drawing pictures for you, Katniss," he interrupts, his color still high, "and I would love to make you a picture-book – if that isn't too childish, of course," he adds with a wince. "We had a little handful of picture-books that earlier generations of Mellarks wrote and illustrated and we pored over them every night at bedtime, stroking the handwritten pages and tracing the colorful paintings, drinking in every last little detail. They'll end up being Marko's, for his kids," he explains, his voice brimming with apology, "or I would have brought them out here to share with you."

My heart cracks painfully, both at Peeta's regret and his impulse to share such a precious heirloom with me. I resolve to show him the plant book at the earliest opportunity; to press it into his big hands and see if he can help me find the stories hidden in its pages. "You're too sweet," I murmur, reaching a hand to his temple where the two curls are peeping out, "but it's okay, really. My family didn't have any picture-books, so it's not like I'm missing them now."

"None at all?" he wonders with the same sort of dismayed disbelief as when I told him I'd never tasted lemon before, and when I shake my head his face falls as though I just told him someone died. "That's _terrible_ , Katniss," he says in a hushed, stricken voice. "I'll make you a whole shelf full of books about vixens and redcapped songbirds and greedy goslings," he resolves in an eager rush of breath. "And beautiful princesses with long black braids too."

I shake my head, blushing for reasons I don't quite understand. "But that would take a _lifetime_!" I protest.

"We _have_ a lifetime ahead of us," he reminds me gently. "And I can't imagine a better way to spend my share than making beautiful things for you and your children."

Something hot and sharp splinters in my heart. "No children," I tell him in a whisper because there won't be, _ever_ , not with Peeta married to his Seam sweetheart and filling her womb with little black and gold nestlings at every turn. "Y-You'd be better off making presents for _your_ kids," I suggest weakly and turn my face with a stifled whimper to avoid those heartbreaking, beloved eyes.

"Katniss," he says softly, bringing a hand to my averted cheek, but he doesn't turn my face to meet his gaze. "The gifts are yours," he murmurs, "the whole lifetime's worth, regardless of whether or not you ever have kids. And let me assure you –" He sits up beneath me, just enough to rest his cheek against mine, and whispers, "The only children that will ever fill this house will be your own."

My breath catches and now I do I turn toward him, but he's so close that I only manage to drive my cheek firmly against his. "That's madness, Peeta," I whisper back. "You were born to be a father, to –" But I can't manage more than that because I want, more than anything else in all the world, the future that dances on the edges of his words. Black-haired goslits and honey-curled kitlings, a shelf full of picture-books illustrated by Peeta's skillful hands and this gentle, perfect boy as my husband; cooking my meals, cutting my snow-paths, sharing my bed…

I resolve here and now to do everything in my power, however crude and clumsy, to make his life as rich and sweet as he does mine.

"Let me make you breakfast," I offer in a rush; the first thing to come to mind. "I'm nowhere near as good a cook as you, obviously, but I can make squirrel guts tasty enough that Prim will gobble them up without hesitation – not that I'll be making you squirrel guts, of course, but –"

He lays back in the snow, flushed and twinkling, and grins up at me. "I've missed a good squirrel in the pot," he teases, "but a fried egg or two wouldn't go amiss either."

"I can make fried eggs," I answer eagerly. "Soft, hard, somewhere in-between–?"

"Surprise me," he replies, only to immediately hedge, "I mean – if you want to. I'm almost done here, really, and I was going to –"

"I _want_ to make you breakfast," I tell him firmly. "I want to make you lunch and supper too, and all kinds of little snacks and treats and hot drinks. I want to take care of you so badly –"

"Why?" he wonders, all wide innocent eyes, but there's a tiny impish smile tugging at the corners of his mouth and I know he knows the answer – the one I gave him last night. He just, for some strange reason, wants to hear it again, and I have no aversion to telling him.

"Because you're the most precious thing in the world to me, Peeta Mellark," I reply smartly and flick his nose with the tip of my tongue. "Now finish cutting my snow-path, lazy gander, so I can go a-hunting and bring you home a nice fat squirrel."

I try to stand with aplomb but his arms – and the bearskin – are still wrapped around me and I manage to push up a scant inch or two before falling smack-down on top of him again. "I like this plan exceedingly," he informs me; a warm, moist nuzzle against my ear that makes me shudder and ache deep in my belly. "I'm just not altogether ready to let go of you, little vixen. It's not often that a gander gets the upper hand – er, _wing_ – in a situation like this and I'm afraid if I let you go you might try to gobble me up or, worse yet, run away and leave me all alone."

There's a startlingly plaintive note in these words and I lean against him, rubbing my cheek against his mouth in a kit-like, reassuring fashion. "I'm not a turkey, silly gander," I remind him, "though I can't promise there won't be any gobbling _ever_ , and anyway, where would I go? _You_ are my home."

I lean back just a whisper to meet his eyes and this time it's a serious exchange. Silly as we may be in our banter of ganders and vixens, my dedication to this boy is absolute, and the resulting catch in his breath implies that he understands this, maybe for the first time ever. "I'll do everything I can to be worthy of that," he whispers. "To be worthy of _you_ ," and I shush him with my forehead pressed to his.

"Everything about you is better than _any_ part of me could ever hope to be," I murmur. "I'm just a strange wild creature of feather, fur, and bone; no more special than any bird or beast in these woods, but I care so much about you. Please let me make you breakfast."

He gives a broken little chuckle and tips his head so our noses brush. "Every creature in these woods is precious, Katniss," he replies, "every last bird and beast, and you are their very queen. I would be delighted – nay, humbled beyond measure – to eat a meal you prepared."

It's just pretty lies, of course, more sweet honeyed nonsense spilling effortlessly from Peeta's golden tongue, but my heart sighs in response nonetheless. "Well then," I murmur, brushing his nose in turn, "you should probably let me go."

Peeta presses his lips together, narrows his eyes, and makes a sound in his throat that resembles nothing so much as a whine: the painful, wrenching sort made by a hungry, injured, or abandoned animal. "I don't want to," he whispers, and there's nothing silly or teasing or playful about it. "I-I mean: I want _both_ things," he clarifies with a thin smile, as though trying to cover up the vulnerability in his previous statement. "I want breakfast – breakfast made by you – and I need to finish cutting the snow-paths, but…I want so badly to keep holding you," he concludes in a small, sheepish voice.

I swallow back half a dozen sounds of pleasure – a sigh, a moan, a whimper, a giddy little laugh – and chase a cheeky smile onto my face. "Well," I suggest delicately, "I can easily make breakfast while you finish the snow-paths, then you can come in and we can eat together, maybe on the sofa, and if you wanted to you – maybe you – could…could hold me then."

I don't know how I get the words out without blushing or dissolving into a fit of euphoric giggles. This can't be real; none of it. Peeta Mellark is holding me like a lover and wants to continue doing so, even at the cost of his breakfast, and I'm gleefully coming up with ways to make that happen.

"I was hoping you would say something like that," he confesses, and now the sheepishness is in his smile. "But I really want my present too, which means I need to let you work this morning…"

My brows fly upward in mock-affront and I sit up sharply. Peeta's hold around me loosens but doesn't break and his arms slide down my back to encircle my hips, anchoring me snugly over his pelvis. "First of all," I declare, as frightfully as I can manage, "how dare you assume that it's your decision whether I snuggle with you or stretch a deerskin."

Peeta's eyes gape in genuine horror and I consider reassuring him with a flicker of a smile, but not quite yet. "Secondly," I forge on, every bit as sternly, "I'm appalled that you persist in assuming that this deerskin of mine is meant for you in some way."

"I'm sorry," he whispers, mortified and contrite. "I-I thought maybe, since you wouldn't let me help or even be out there –"

"And thirdly," I thunder on, "I managed to sew and stuff a rabbit-skin muffler _and_ a pillow without your knowledge, without shirking any of my huntress duties or, as far as you were concerned, altering my schedule in any way. Do you really think –?" The smile breaks through then, spiraling irrepressibly from the corners of my mouth. "Do you really think," I say, "that I can't manage to work a deerskin and cook a meal and still find all the time in the world to be with you?"

Peeta sighs, a deep sinking moan of relief. "I'll concede that," he replies, mirthful but ragged, as though he can't quite believe that I'm not really upset with him. "But we weren't snuggling back then," he points out, "and snuggling with a wild creature is a serious business, not to be taken lightly or for granted."

"Is that so?" I wonder teasingly, cocking my head at him in inquisitive-bird-fashion.

"You never know when – or if – it will happen again," he says, and it's another naked confession, like his refusal to let me go. "All that sweet soft fur and bright eyes and nuzzling – _so_ much nuzzling," he moans, closing his eyes for a moment. "And I know that's the nature of lo– of befriending a wild thing: learning patience and earning trust; never pursuing, no matter how badly you want to, but always waiting for her to come to you, but…there's a vixen on top of me," he breathes, opening his eyes once more. "The very queen of these wild woods, who left her snug warm den to find me; to topple me in the snow and nuzzle me to bits. I don't think I can bear it if that never happens again," he confesses in a whisper. "I know it's a terrible thing, holding onto an animal that's trying to get away, but –"

I need him to stop talking. If he says another word my heart will literally fly out my mouth and hit him in the face, a damp and downy redbird with only one song to sing, and she'll trill it over and over and over again, damning me and destroying this – this wonderful, breathless, magical _thing_ between me and Peeta that feels so good, so _impossibly_ good that it almost hurts – forever. So I do the only thing I can think of.

I kiss him squarely on the mouth, right when he least expects it.

I realize it's a terrible idea as it's happening – the worst idea I've ever had; maybe the worst idea anyone's ever had in all the world – but it's too late; far too late to stop. Before Peeta can begin to guess what I'm doing I plunge my head down like a heron seeking a fat perch and press my mouth firmly over his, driving his blue-crested head back into the snow.

It's an awful kiss, even worse than my first attempt. Everything about it is wrong. Peeta's rigid beneath me – horrified, I would imagine, if not terrified – not yielding and warm, and my mouth is hard and beastlike; a vixen's gruff chiding kiss to her errant kit. His lips, still moving with words when mine crashed down, are tight and frozen, like the door of the shack after an ice storm, and I want to burst into tears.

Of course he doesn't want my kiss. He doesn't want me at all.

_Katniss, what have you done?_

I've kissed – am _still_ _kissing_ – Peeta Mellark, without reason or ribbon. I only did it to shut him up, to stop him saying more tender, beautiful things that would make me blurt out my love, but surely by kissing him I've done just that.

It's over now, all of it. Rabbit skins and deerskins and falling asleep in each other's arms amid furs and firelight. Oranges and ribbons and the promise of a whole crate of lemons. Goslits and kitlings and a shelf full of priceless hand-painted storybooks.

I sit up, gasping air back into my lungs to apologize one last time.

Peeta gazes up at me with wide eyes, the pupils so huge and dark that the bright blue barely makes a thumbnail moon around them, and he's panting a little too; quick, shallow puffs of frost leave his lips as his chest jerks beneath me. He's about to tell me to go, I know it; to take my father's coat and my hunting boots and start trekking back to town, and if I can just find my tongue before he finds his I won't have to hear him say it.

"What was that for?" he whispers, and just like that, I'm transported back to my bird dream. To a drab little brown-black bird rubbing her tiny head against the bare chest of a gentle blond boy, right over his heart.

Somehow, _impossibly_ , he's not angry with me. Stunned and perplexed, yes – of course; naturally, how else could he feel in response to such a wildly unexpected act? – but not angry.

Maybe it doesn't count as a real kiss if it comes from a wild creature.

In other circumstances this would be a heartbreaking thought but right now it's the sweetest to ever cross my mind. Instinct kicks in swift and keen and I bring a hand to the neckline of my nightgown, twining the loops of its red ribbon-tie around my fingers. "I missed one," I tell him with unfeigned shyness. "One more ribbon means one more kiss, right?"

Peeta's face lights up like the dawn, or maybe it's literally the dawn itself – the sun rising through the woods just beyond us and shimmering over the fresh snow, all pink and gold – spilling across his sweet face. "I thought maybe you didn't notice," he says with equal shyness, raising a hand to brush the ribbon at my throat. "Or…or maybe it didn't count."

"Didn't notice?" I echo, not bothering to hide the aghast note in my voice. "What sort of huntress do you take me for, to overlook something so vibrant and precious?"

Sweetheart ribbons are bright as winter berries and even more precious to receive, but of course I don't tell Peeta that. If I understand his reasoning correctly, I can have as many kisses as he's given me red ribbons, whether I received them at New Year's or not.

I like this game very much.

"And now I think of it," I go on merrily – no, _greedily_ , and shamelessly so, like a cat spying an unattended bowl filled to its brim with fresh cream or maybe a vixen with an oblivious, tender young chicken in her sights – "you tied a ribbon around my New Year's jar of applesauce."

I dip my head with a grin, eager to dispense another kiss, but Peeta stops me with a hand at my shoulder. "Actually," he croaks, "I-I was hoping I could save that kiss for a little while."

Far from being dismayed, I laugh aloud. "You can't save up New Year's kisses, silly beak," I tease, tapping his beloved mouth with a fingertip. "They'll go bad before summer; everyone knows that."

"I wasn't thinking so long as that," he replies. "I, um…it's my birthday in a couple of months and –" He breaks off, blushing hot and fierce. "I-I thought…I might like to have a kiss then," he concludes in a very small voice.

" _Oh_ ," I breathe, my mind filling with the image of Peeta sitting alone at his kitchen table with a pretty little birthday cake and no one to share it with him but his beloved garden birds.

Of course, his sweetheart won't be giving him anything for his birthday, let alone a precious kiss, and I'd hazard a guess he didn't get many birthday kisses as a child either.

_My poor sweet boy._

I have no idea when Peeta's birthday is – March, perhaps? – but it would make the perfect occasion to give him the deerskin – along with dozens of other wild presents, of course.

"A birthday kiss is easy enough," I assure him, endeavoring to hide my delight at the prospect. "I'm happy to save one till then. But what about the ribbon you tied around my mug handle last night?" I wonder with a playful, foxy grin. He's not holding me back with any real force, and if he lets his arm slack I can nip down and steal another kiss with ease.

Peeta promptly looks out across the garden, evading my eyes. "I thought…I-I thought maybe I could have _two_ kisses for my birthday," he confesses to the snow, sounding like nothing so much as a sad little boy, at once defeated and hopeful. "If that's excessive or…or greedy, though," he says quickly, looking up at me once more, "we can scrap that second kiss altogether or –"

"Two kisses sounds quite reasonable," I break in, tracing his mouth with a gentle fingertip. He really has no idea, my precious, kiss-starved sweetheart. Come his birthday I'll give him more kisses than he could ever dream of. I'll smother him with kisses, gleeful and giddy, without a single breath of hesitation before any one of them.

"And what about all the little ribbon scraps?" I wonder quietly. "The ones tied around my braids, from your evergreen sprigs last night."

He turns his head just enough to press a small kiss to my fingertip where it lingers against his mouth. "I thought they might be nice before I leave for the Games," he says softly. "Or maybe after I get back."

My heart breaks open at these words. My poor sweet boy, rationing his New Year's kisses like his last loaf of bread; saving them for what will surely be the time of greatest need, of grief and sorrow and fear. The first Games since his own, when he has to go back to the Capitol and try to save the life of one of two doomed kids who might be former classmates, neighbors, even friends.

No matter what happens he'll come home broken, little better than after his own Games.

I'll kiss him so much before he leaves, regardless of ribbons, that he'll barely notice the Reaping, the Capitol, or their terrible Games, and afterward I'll bound to him at the train platform, catch him up in my arms in a cascade of soothing kisses, and carry him home to a nest of silky furs. I'll bathe him in the stone tub, gently scrubbing the grime of Capitol corruption and cruelty from his precious body, then I'll tuck him into my own bed and feed him hearty spoonfuls of rabbit stew and love him with all my might.

But of course, I tell him none of this.

"That's an awfully long time for a kiss to keep," I say instead, lightly. "You'd do just as well to enjoy them now and get a fresh batch when summer comes."

Peeta gazes up at me with hungry, hopeful eyes. "See, I was thinking," he says, a little raggedly, "if we could find a jar with a nice snug lid, maybe I could keep those kisses indefinitely – till I need them, you know? They're just little kisses, after all – half-kisses, even – so if we kept them tucked away, safe and sound –"

I lean down slowly; intently, but slow enough that Peeta could stop me if he wanted to. His breath catches but his hand slacks and slips against my shoulder as I gently, so very, _very_ gently, kiss his mouth: a soft, careful, unhurried press of lips followed by a nuzzle, brushing my mouth across his again and again.

I wonder why I avoided his lips earlier when it feels so nice and good and _right_ to kiss him there. There's an almost magnetic draw between my mouth and his; now that I've found it, it feels impossible to break away from. Like my mouth was crafted for his, to meet and interlock – no, meld together – in an exquisite new whole.

 _Stolen kisses,_ my conscience chides harshly in Peeta's mother's voice. _You aren't the girl he loves. There'll be a limit to these friendly kisses, mark my words, and your heart will break beyond repair when he finally has to tell you it can't go on._

I pull back just enough to meet Peeta's eyes, which are wide and stunned but not in an unpleasant way. He looks like he's just witnessed something wondrous beyond compare, like a solar eclipse or a doe birthing triplets. "Don't worry, sweet boy," I soothe, brushing the tip of his nose with mine. "You'll still get your birthday kisses and Reaping kisses and post-Games kisses – all the little half-kisses you could ever want. That one was for the ribbon on the spile."

"Come here," he groans, and he pulls me down into his arms, somehow even deeper than before, and hugs me so tightly to him that I'm half-certain he's fused us together. "Can I keep you, Katniss?" he whispers against my cheek, rocking me against him. "Will you stay with me for as long as you live and be my very own vixen, my redcap, my precious little goose?"

" _Yes,_ " I promise, answering without teasing or hesitation in a wild flood of bliss. "I'll stay with you forever."

This, I imagine dazedly, is how the tale of the fox and the little prince should have gone. When the moment of departure arrived, the prince would catch up his tamed companion and carry her off with him on endless adventures among the stars – or better still, he'd choose to stay and build a life with her, amidst apple trees and wheat fields and stolen chickens, instead of returning to his lonely planet and his proud, foolish rose.

"Please keep me forever, little prince," I plead, a muffled whimper against his throat, and Peeta eagerly moans his assent.

"I could never let you go, little fox," he whispers, squeezing me so tightly that it crushes the breath from my lungs and makes stars dance behind my eyes. "My precious little fox."

"I might nip you," I warn him feebly, my heart soaring. "I'm fierce a-and positively greedy when it comes to food and….and I like chicken way too much –"

"I know all of that already and love every bit," Peeta says huskily. "I love it when you're fierce and love it even more when you nip me. I love how greedy you are for my cooking – how furious you get when I try to feed you someone else's – and I'll make you chicken for every meal for the rest of your days if it means you'll stay with me forever."

Something in his words makes me ache between my legs, a deep, hollow yearning that I try to ease by shifting my pelvis against his – the thing I wanted so badly to do last night, to be close and _complete_ as we held each other on the sofa – and we fit together like a sigh, just as I'd imagined. The slight, firm rise between his legs nestles perfectly into the empty, aching cleft between mine and it feels so overwhelmingly, breathtakingly _good_ that I rock and twist my hips in hopes of even _more_ , rubbing blissfully against him with soft, eager little mews.

Peeta gives a muffled cry; a sharp, pained sound, and I clamber backwards onto his thighs, horrified to have hurt him and, no doubt, mortified him all at once. I can't begin to guess why rubbing against his groin felt so good, but I'm intelligent enough to know that his most private and sensitive parts are housed there and it must be uncomfortable, if not downright painful, to have my weight pressing down, squashing them.

"I'm so sorry!" I blurt, squeezing my eyes shut so I don't have to look at him after this appalling mistake. "I didn't mean to hurt you! It just felt so good to be close to you that I wanted…" _I wanted to be even_ closer _,_ I add silently, but I can't begin to understand what that means. "I-I don't know what I was thinking," I whisper, "and I'm so incredibly sorry."

To my utter astonishment, this is met with a breathy chuckle and a gentle brush of gloved fingers against my cheek. "Katniss," Peeta says, and his voice is as uneven as his laughter. "You absolutely _didn't_ hurt me, or do anything wrong whatsoever. It felt –" He breaks off and hesitates for a long moment, clearing his throat several times. "It felt _wonderful_ – _beyond_ wonderful – to have you so close to me," he murmurs. "It…took me by surprise, how good it felt."

I open my eyes to frown dubiously down at him. This is so obviously a kind lie – that it could be anything short of excruciating to have someone sitting heavily atop your groin – that it hurts to hear, but it's sweet and selfless of him to say it nonetheless. "Don't lie to spare my feelings," I scowl.

Peeta shakes his crested head with a sad, crooked smile. "Oh Katniss," he sighs, "I shudder to think where we would be right now if you allowed yourself to believe even half of the things you're convinced can't be true."

I blink rapidly, tangled up in the riddle of his words. "What's that supposed to mean?" I ask.

He grins suddenly, seizing both of my hands and bringing them to his mouth for a sprinkling of sound kisses. "It means," he replies, "that at this moment, I want breakfast made by these two little hands more than anything else in the whole world."

I cock my head in contemplative bird-fashion and narrow my eyes in thought. Peeta's clearly a skillful liar and what he's saying is true in part, but: "No, you don't," I determine. "You want to snuggle with me some more."

At this Peeta bursts out laughing, so hard that it jostles me on my perch across his thighs and brings tears to his bright eyes. "Oh, little goose," he says, gasping through his laughter and squeezing my hands. "Only you could say such a thing and make it sound like bad weather is on the way. You're absolutely right," he informs me merrily, "and I adore you.

" _Please_ make me breakfast, little sweetheart," he beseeches, swinging our joined hands like an imploring child. "I'll finish your snow-path in two shakes and then I'll come in and we can eat, or just curl up together if you want, or curl up together _for_ eating and –"

"Okay," I squeak, because every one of these prospects – minus getting off of Peeta and having to go inside without him – sounds like heaven. "What would you like for breakfast, lazy gander?" I ask breathlessly. "I mean, besides your fried eggs."

He grins. "Fried eggs from you would be a feast for a king," he says. "That's enough, really – _more_ than enough – so long as I get a few dusky vixen toes to nibble afterward."

I flush fiercely at this request and not just from silliness. "That sounds easy enough," I reply, a half-lie. He's going to get much more than fried eggs, of course, and I have no intention of presenting him with my bare toes to nibble, however playfully.

I scramble to my feet, eager to start on his meal, and flinch as the cold air strikes me like a blow. Without the warmth of Peeta's coat and body I could well die out here in my nightgown.

"Hey, hold on," Peeta says, clambering up out of our snow-hollow, and he rushes to enfold me in the bearskin. "You can't go back to the house like that," he says, hugging me to him with the fur. "You'll freeze."

"It's less than fifty feet away," I point out, but in a contented sort of haze. I hadn't expected to be wrapped in boy-musk and bearskin again so soon and now I have even less desire to forsake it.

"Still," he says, and we make our way back to the house in a lopsided three-legged-race fashion, hugging each other about the middle and stumbling over each other's feet and laughing all the while. Peeta insists on walking me up the steps, even, but once the door is open he tries to gently eject me directly from the bearskin into the house without bringing himself inside, a plan I neatly derail by catching hold of his waistband and tugging him over the threshold along with me.

"You'll freeze too," I chide and re-bundle him snugly, closing the clasps on the bearskin, tugging up the muffler to cover him from cheeks to breastbone, adjusting his crested cap for maximum coverage, and even retrieving one of my father's scarves for an extra layer of warmth around his head and neck.

He looks not unlike a child when I'm done; a round Merchant boy in a patchwork of mismatched outerwear, and I giggle at the sight. "I hope you're pleased with yourself, little vixen," he teases – or rather his eyes do; the only part of him that's still clearly visible. "The next time you go hunting I get to bundle _you_ up."

I envision standing beside the living room fire while Peeta swaddles me in so many furs that I can barely walk, let alone climb a tree or draw my bow, and imagine shedding those furs like a chrysalis to leap jubilantly on my boy in a scarlet swirl of newborn wings – or better still, parting the furs just enough to slip my boy inside; my bear-mate, to hibernate with me all winter through, all downy bare skin and sweet musk and moist, sleepy nuzzles about each other's ears and throat.

"That sounds fair," I reply, and with a kiss to the furry hillock of Peeta's nose I turn him about and nudge him back out the door, with a dusting sweep down the back of his bearskin for good measure.

I watch him return dutifully to his snow-shovel and turn back to give me a little wave before he resumes his work, and I'm so overcome with happiness that I almost can't breathe. I'm bursting with it; half-stupid with it. I love Peeta and he adores –

 _Yes,_ I realize, like a certain whisper over the stilled breath in my lungs. No, Peeta doesn't _love_ me, not like a man loves a woman or even like a boy loves a girl, but this isn't just indulgence, not anymore. This is the prince kneeling in the meadow and opening his arms for his little fox to spring into. His pink cheek rubbing her sleek one, his big hands cradling her small body snugly to his chest.

A little sound leaves my throat, half a laugh and half a sob, and I feel dampness at the corners of my eyes.

My boy _adores_ me.

Fox-Katniss and bird-Katniss – redcap-Katniss and greedy-gosling-Katniss – but _Katniss_ nonetheless.

The urge to take care of him, to bundle him up in my love and wrap him snug as a babe almost suffocates me. It's a pleasant urge but an overwhelming one, the likes of which I've never felt before. If I'd managed to doubt it till now it would be undeniable in this moment.

I love him. Love him so much that there's no room for anything else, neither sleep nor hunger nor thought for breath.

Confirming just how thoroughly I've lost my mind, I dissolve into a fit of giggles.

This must be how Grandpa Asa felt during that long hopeless year of wooing Granny Ashpet. It feels wonderful and _aches_ all at once, like an over-full belly, only it's my heart that's full to brimming and spilling over.

 _Where does the extra love go?_ I wonder silently, foolishly, as I kick off my boots. _I'm such a small fox with such a small, stubborn heart – a bird's heart in a girl's breast, no bigger than a thimble, and with no greater capacity. Whatever will I_ do _with so much love?_ _Shall I seal it in jars for a colder season? Gather it up in baskets and spin it into thread, to sew garments for my beloved?_

At the thought of jars I go to the back of the pantry, where Peeta keeps empty ones for future canning needs, and find one with a nice wide neck – wide enough that Peeta could fit his hand inside if he curled his fingers together. I untie the ribbon scraps – the half-kisses – from around my braids, sprinkle them one by one into the jar and screw the lid on again, but only just, with a sprawling smile and feverishly hot cheeks. This will go in the living room, to remind my boy of the little presents lying in store for him but also – I flush even hotter – in the event that he gets impatient, or I do. This jar isn't sealed and my paws are swift and stealthy. It would be so easy to let a kiss out early; a slender redwing or two, darting quick as a hummingbird, and perhaps if two escaped they might mate and create even more redwings: a tree-full – no, a _sky-full_ – of tiny, merry kisses.

 _A sky-full of tiny, merry kisses…_ I tuck away that thought for safekeeping as I set the jar on the living room's fireside table with a festive little peal of glass on wood. _What sort of gift might equal a sky-full of tiny, merry kisses?_

I pause beside the sofa, surveying the area thoughtfully. Peeta wants to snuggle with me, so badly that he was willing to lie in the snow and indefinitely postpone his breakfast in order to prolong it – a thought that leaves me positively dizzy with pleasure. Suppose I set up a place for us to do just that: a cuddle-nest of sorts?

It's surely the most absurd notion that anyone ever had, but that doesn't stop me making two trips upstairs to retrieve armfuls of furs and pillows from both of our bedrooms and shaping the full breadth of the sofa into a plush and inviting hollow. I'd prefer the floor like last night: knitting ourselves together like newborn kits or lovers with the warm dance of pine flames across our faces, but that feels too daring somehow, especially this morning, with my body craving that heady new closeness and fumbling against his to find it. Peeta was impossibly sweet about it but I know I hurt him; he wouldn't have cried out otherwise, and at the very least I made him terribly uncomfortable, perching on his groin like that, never mind how breathtakingly _good_ it felt for me.

 _No, better to make certain that our bodies never fit together that way again,_ I resolve, plumping my deerskin pillows along the arms of the sofa. We can cuddle each other delirious in this nest without touching in any such forbidden fashion, and I intend for us to do just that as soon as we've finished breakfast.

 _Breakfast made by these two little hands._ The thing my sweetheart wants more than anything in the whole world – after more snuggling with me.

I return to the kitchen and dance merrily between the pantry and the icebox, feeling like a fairytale maiden in a treasure room. In this moment every last one of these treasures is mine – every silky scoop of flour, every jar of fragrant spice, every drop of milk and morsel of cheese – to use in preparation of a meal for my sweetheart.

_So what shall it be?_

Peeta's only request was fried eggs so those, of course, are a must, though I decide to dress them up a bit. My father used to make something he called "egg in a nest," a favorite of Grandpa Asa's, where you cut a hole in a piece of bread with the rim of a cup and then fry an egg in the hole or "nest." It was silly and sustaining and a good way to stretch bread – one child could eat the "nest" while her parent ate the leftover circle of bread, perhaps with a few stolen dips of rich yolk – and I suspect Peeta will love it. He's made today's bread already, a moist white-and-gold loaf that smells of honey, and I decide to whisk up a sweet griddle-toast batter of milk and egg with a few drops of precious vanilla and a cloud of Peeta's beloved nutmeg to dip the "nest" in before putting it in the skillet. This makes the "nest" just as special as the egg; a sweet contrast to the savory egg and much more nourishing for my hardworking boy.

That's last on my agenda, though. My strong, sweet boy needs much more than a couple of eggs fried into griddle-toast; his muscles need meat and potatoes after carving snow-paths.

Potatoes are easy enough. I slice up three plump ones, still with their tender golden skins on, along with shallots and onions and a clove of garlic, and set them aside to fry just before I start the griddle-toast. Bacon would make them better still, though, so I go to the icebox to snatch a few of the thick-cut strips Rooba sent in payment for her portion of the deer. I'll chop them into small bits and fry them crisp, then use the bacon fat to fry the potatoes in.

 _Peeta likes sausage,_ I remember all at once, recalling yesterday's meaty egg bake and Marko's tiny sausage-and-gravy pie. _Loves it, even._ Rooba sent us several of her delicious sage and apple sausages but I want the spicy kind like Marko used; ground, not in casings, and I think we have some of that frozen. I can't manage a Mellark-caliber pie crust, not even on the best of days, but a small batch of drop biscuits is easy enough, with peppered cream gravy to go over.

I open the freezer side of the icebox, intent on a fat chub of sausage, and the first thing I see is a broad, flat parcel. A very familiar butcher-paper parcel labeled in bold black letters.

_Peeta's Sweetheart_

My heart lurches with something halfway between fury and panic. My venison ribs, the ones I parceled up as a gift for Peeta's girl, along with a few pounds of choice meat, are still here – in Peeta's own icebox.

What are they doing back here? How can they _possibly_ be here?

I'm so mad at Pollux that I could spit nails. As much as I resent Peeta's mystery sweetheart, the ribs were supposed to be delivered fresh for her poor family's New Year's dinner – and yet here they are, frozen and stored away at our house.

_Does Peeta know they're here?_

He must. They're shelved smack in the middle of his meat freezer. He can't _not_ know.

My anger drains like water down a plughole and is immediately replaced by a queasy sort of dread. Peeta knew I was planning to send venison to his sweetheart and he half told me not to. _Just…send what you were planning on,_ he said when I asked how many were in her family, regarding the parcels we'd already discussed, _and…keep plenty for yourself. That'll take care of it._

Instead I sent her half of the coveted ribs and several fine cuts of venison besides – meat I would have loved to give to my own family or better still, keep for Peeta – and here it is, back in my hands.

So what _happened?_

I exhale slowly, deliberately calming my racing heart. I told Pollux to deliver her parcel along with the one for Peeta's family, but it's entirely possible that they didn't want to be stuck in the middle of this strange lopsided courtship and sent it back with him. Maybe Pollux tried to deliver the parcel directly, knowing the girl's identity, and she refused it, or maybe he checked with Peeta before going to town and Peeta told him not to deliver it.

After all, Peeta hasn't declared himself – if last night's strange and wondrous bedtime story is to be believed, he _can't_ – and I came crashing into the scenario with a clumsy, resentful love letter scrawled boldly across a parcel of raw meat.

It's almost certainly not Pollux's fault and I should be relieved that the parcel is back – or _still_ – here, not in the Seam. I get to enjoy another round of tender, flavorful ribs with Peeta, who's been spared undue embarrassment from my bull-headed mistake, and that mysterious black-haired girl, named for a white flower, with silver eyes and a voice like starlight, remains ignorant of his love.

I carefully reach around the venison parcel and pick up the sausage chub I was seeking to begin with.

 _Perhaps the ribs think_ I'm _Peeta's sweetheart,_ I think with a wild little laugh. After all, a slab of venison ribs can't tell one black-braided Seam girl from another.

_Maybe they came back to me on purpose._

I close the icebox door with a scoff that sounds ever so slightly like a whimper.

The stove is full in no time: a pan of drop biscuits in one of the ovens, one skillet hissing with aromatic crumbles of spicy sausage and another sizzling with bacon, with a third on deck for griddling up "egg in a nest" once everything else is done. I've got a bowl of flour, salt, garlic, and freshly ground black peppercorns waiting to become cream gravy, a heap of potatoes and onions itching to be fried crisp, and six perfect brown eggs circling my griddle-batter bowl, just hankering to be cracked into their bread "nests."

I'm not especially skilled when it comes to coffee, not the luxurious way Peeta makes it, so I simmer a pot of cider with a pinch of ground ginger and a handful of cranberries added. The tiny gem-bright fruits will lend their vibrant color to the brew and their tart flavor, coupled with the fiery but soothing ginger, will be perfect for Peeta's throat and lungs after breathing in so much cold air.

I'm surrounded by luscious smells: the smells of my own cooking; the first real meal I've prepared since leaving home, but instead of my mother and sister I'm preparing to feed my sweetheart. My sweet boy, my Peeta, my lonely, silly, lazy gander.

I laugh, a bright and glorious sound fueled by sheer, cascading waves of joy.

I never dreamt I could be this happy, let alone with a barb in my heart where my beloved loves another, but I can and I _am_. This must be what love – or being _in_ love – truly feels like, not the aching and heartbreak and tears of yesterday afternoon in the stable. I feel radiant and foolish all at once, and before I can think twice about it, a song is spilling out of me in merry silver motes, like raindrops caught in leaves in the gentle gust that follows a downpour:

 _Fox, a goose I saw you stealing_  
_Give it back to me!_  
_Give it back to me!_  
_Lest the hunter come to get you_  
_With his arrows three-ee-ee!_  
_With his bow and knife and hatchet  
_ _And his arrows three!_

It's a silly folk song but an uncommon one, even precious: a gift from Granny Ashpet's father, about whom I know almost nothing. I don't know his name – Dad always referred to him as "Granny Ashpet's father," not "Grandpa" or even "my mama's papa" – or if he was even married to her mother Elspeth, a Seam girl who died giving birth to their only child. Granny Ashpet was raised by her aunt and grandmother and given their last name, Greenbrier, but her father often came to see her, at least when she was very young, and by all accounts he adored his little daughter. He was the one who took her to the woods and taught her to hunt while nurturing her love of songs and old tales, things he had shared with her mother.

If ever there was true fairy blood in my lineage it would have come from Granny Ashpet's father. Even in my father's least fanciful accounts he sounded like an elfin king from the very heart of the wild woods: a stern, fierce man with green-gold eyes who spoke poetry like _liebchen_ and _liebling_ , words never heard before or since in Twelve, who called his daughter _Aschenputtel_ rather than Ashpet and told of magic hazel-trees growing from graves and white doves bearing dresses of silver and gold.

The silly fox-and-goose song I sing now he learned as a child and taught to both Granny Ashpet and later, in one of their rare encounters, my father. He called it " _Liebes Füchslein_ " – he knew the whole song in its original fairy-words; strange beautiful words like _Jäger_ ("hunter"), _Dieb_ ("thief"), and _Gänsebraten_ (a savory mouthful meaning "roast goose" and nearly as delicious on the tongue as the dish itself) – but the reason why isn't clear till the end.

The second verse is macabre but in a light-hearted manner, as the singer warns the thieving fox of what will become of it if it persists in making off with its prize:

 _Hunter swift his bow will draw_  
_Loose three long quills at you!_  
_Three long quills at you!_  
_Off your pelt comes for his fine cap_  
_And your bones for ste-ew-ew!_  
_Meat for roasting, blood for sausage  
_ _And your bones for stew!_

The final verse, the favorite of all three generations of singers – four now, including myself – finally identifies the thief as not just any old fox but a small female one. " _Liebes Füchslein_ ," Granny Ashpet's father sang – "dear little vixen" – and usually with a chuckle in his voice, indicating that the singer has a certain measure of affection for the vulpine thief:

 _Little vixen, heed my counsel:_  
_Do not be a thief!_  
_Do not be a thief!_  
_Mouse is goose for such as you are_  
_And shall cause less grie-ie-ief!_  
_Keep to mice! Though far less tasty,  
_ _They shall cause less grief!_

My father and I sang this song together countless times in the woods, often adding a plaintive _honk-honk!_ to punctuate a phrase, and laughed till our bellies ached at the image of a small stubborn vixen, her mouth full of goose neck with a desperate snapping bill on one side and a plump quivering body on the other, being forced to relinquish her feast in favor of a field mouse the size of one dainty paw.

 _This goose,_ I silently and solemnly inform Granny Ashpet's fairy father, Granny Ashpet herself, and my own father all at once, _this plump and lonely gander, is mine, whole and entire. I'm afraid no mouse can compare to this prize and I'm not about to trade him for one. I want a winter's worth of fairy stories and yellow down to nestle in and a clever beak to nip at my neck and fingers and toes._

I want goslits and kitlings too – this gander's own sweet and downy younglings, carried inside me and birthed in a nest of silky furs – to eat my foragings and drink my milk, but I'm not about to tell my stern fairy great-grandfather that.

Though now I think of it, he was none too impressed by Granny Ashpet's choice of husband – not until Grandpa Asa spoke up to his imperative would-be father-in-law and proved that he wasn't simply another dirt-poor miner with a scrawny body and a plain face – and he had absolutely no problem with his fierce, stunning daughter exhibiting pride and independence well above her social station, so maybe he _wouldn't_ take exception to his little vixen of a great-grandchild having designs upon an oblivious gander whose heart is otherwise engaged.

In any case, I abandon further declarations to set the kitchen table, complete with a few fat beeswax candles and pine sprigs stolen from the dining room, and start the song over from the beginning.

 _Fox, a goose I saw you stealing_  
_Give it back to me!_  
_Give it back to me!_  
_Lest the hunter come to get you  
_ _With his arrows three-ee-ee!_

My ears perk up at a sound – the creak of the back door opening, followed by the heavy stamp of snow-packed boots – from the direction of the mudroom and I grin with all my might. My boy is back and his timing is perfect: I'm just scooping the last egg in its sweet griddle-nest out onto a platter – no mere plate for my sweetheart! – heaped high with drop biscuit hillocks drowning in an avalanche of hot sausage gravy, with a valley of crisp-fried potatoes and bacon in-between. _I'll feed my gander so well he'll never dream of leaving my den, not even for the prettiest goose in the gaggle,_ I jest silently, and keep singing. He's going to sneak up on me, I'm sure of it, to catch me up in a hug from behind and perhaps even a nuzzle at my neck, and I need to pretend I didn't hear him and keep nonchalantly laying the table or he won't try.

He won't _really_ surprise me, of course. I doubt he _can_ , not walking on those heavy feet, but I so badly want him to try.

I go to the stove to ladle out a crimson mugful of cranberry cider, deliberately turning my back in anticipation of strong arms and a beloved frosty face burrowing into my nape, and continue idly with my song.

 _Hunter swift his bow will draw_  
_Loose three long quills at you!  
_ _Three long quills at you!_

But soon the third verse is done, the table is fully set, and still Peeta hasn't appeared; in fact, there's no longer any sound from the mudroom at all. I know he came in the house and there's no way he could have left the mudroom without me hearing, which means he must still be out there.

My mind darts in twelve terrified directions at once. Peeta took longer outside than I expected; maybe he wore himself out and he's too tired to come through to the kitchen. Maybe he has a weak heart like Grandpa Asa and he's sitting on the bench beneath the coat hooks, white-faced and gasping for breath. Maybe he hurt his leg and it took him all this while to make it back to the house – and here I am, singing silly songs and ignoring his pain.

I toss my apron onto the counter and bolt out to the mudroom, my heart stumbling over itself with worry, to find Peeta sitting on the bench, divested of his outer garments but still wearing his boots, leaning back against his bearskin with his eyes closed and breathing slow and deep.

Could he simply be so tired that he fell asleep? It's very early still and he's already worked so hard…

Then again, more than one miner's heart has given out in the process of scooping heavy snow.

"Oh no," I breathe and hurry over to him, kneeling between his legs and reaching up to cradle his face. "What's wrong, sweethear – sweet boy?" I whisper, catching myself at the very last second. He can't just be "Peeta" anymore, soft and sweet though his name is on my tongue, but I can't begin to think of an appropriate alternative. I can't call him "sweetheart" or "darling," to say nothing of "beloved," and adorable as "lonely/lazy/silly gander" is, it's hardly a lover's endearment.

Grandpa Asa persistently called Granny Ashpet _acushla,_ an endearment in his own fairy tongue, long before she had any intention of becoming his sweetheart and it used to drive her crazy. My father addressed my mother that way sometimes too, usually in the dark of night, whispered breathlessly across their pillows, and now and again I've heard it tossed between the oldest miners and their wives, but do I dare use it for Peeta?

I abandon this ridiculous query and lean up to peck him briskly on the still-chilly tip of his nose, making him open his eyes with a start.

"Little songbird," he gasps. His eyes are soft and dreamlike, neither wet nor over-bright nor ringed with redness, making it likeliest that he simply drifted off to sleep upon sitting down.

Even so, I need to know if my boy needs care, and without another speck of delay. "Are you hurt?" I ask, impatiently but as gentle as I can manage. "Is it your leg? Your heart? Did you –?"

He interrupts me with a tender laugh and leans in to brush our noses together. "I can't say my heart is unaffected," he murmurs, "but I'm entirely fine, little sweetheart. You were singing," he says, his voice catching slightly, "so I sat down to listen. I-I really like it when you sing."

I can't imagine why. My voice is pleasant but surely nothing out of the common way, not like my father's beautiful voice that could silence every bird in the woods, and certainly not while casually singing such a foolish little song. "Silly folk songs about foxes and geese?" I wonder dryly.

"They are the very best ones," he replies with a crooked smile.

I inch my hands up to his temples and push back his curls, made limp and fuzzy by his cap. They've grown longer since I first came here; they're slowly creeping forward to frame his face, and I love it. "I thought you were going to surprise me," I confess softly, and hear my disappointment creeping through.

"I was going to," he answers, rocking his head slowly from side to side, leaning into my touch. "But I thought maybe you had a surprise planned that I would ruin if I came in, and then I heard you singing..." He sighs, long and deep and blissful. "That's more than enough, to be honest," he says huskily. "All the breakfast I need, and then some. You don't need to make me any food. We can just cut a few slices of the bread I baked earlier and eat them with butter and honey."

"I beg your pardon?" I demand, dropping my hands from his face and leaning away with a sudden scowl, but Peeta catches my hands with a laugh and draws them back for a shower of emphatic, happy kisses. "I'd be _content_ with nothing but a song in my belly," he says, "but whatever you've got in the kitchen smells too good to be real. That's part of the reason I sat out here," he admits. "It's been so long since someone's made me a meal – someone who cares about me – and when I walked in, this place felt more like home than ever before. The smell of a delicious hot breakfast a-and your beautiful voice… You sounded so _happy_ ," he whispers. "It was like a dream and I didn't want it to end."

"It's not going to end," I assure him wildly, "not _ever._ I'll cook for you, every meal of every day for the rest of your life, and I'll –" I look down at his boots, recalling them all at once. "I'll do this too," I tell him quickly, working them off with efficient care and gently chafing his stockinged left foot between my small hands. His right foot isn't real, of course, but I'll find other ways to tend to that side. "I'll make you a nice hot bath after you eat," I offer, working my fingers up around his ankle bones. "I know it's hard to get into and out of the tub so I'll help you if you want, and afterward I'll warm some oil for your leg and –"

"Katniss," he croaks, his cheeks crimson as he eases my hands away from his foot, but I've never seen him look so happy. "Katniss, little sweetheart, you don't have to do _any_ of that," he says, but his voice falters in a manner that I'm painfully familiar with: the way it breaks and wavers when you try to refuse something that you want very much indeed.

"You didn't even have to make me breakfast," he tells me. "You offered a-and I was just teasing, telling you to make me fried eggs –"

I smile and lean up to bump the tip of his nose with mine. "You don't want your eggs, then?" I ask him, wide-eyed and mock-wounded. "And after I worked so _very_ hard to make them? _Well_ –" I give a melancholy sigh – "I'm sure there's a little marten or raccoon in your woods who'd be over the moon to have –"

"No, I _do_ want them," he interrupts in a breathy rush. "Oh _please,_ Katniss, I want them," he pleads, catching up my hands and squeezing them tightly. "Your delicious fried eggs a-and everything else you made. I want _everything_ you want to give me. I want –"

"You want the moon," I answer for him with a small, soft smile. "And you shall have it, my sweet boy, one shimmering sliver at a time."

"Oh _Katniss_ ," he moans, and all at once I'm up in his lap with a knee alongside either hip, Peeta's arms wrapped around me and his face buried in my neck.

"That comes later," I tell him bemusedly, cupping his golden head with both hands. "I made us a cuddle-nest on the sofa, for after."

He gives a little whimper against my throat. "I was kidding about that too, Katniss," he protests, but weakly, and I chuckle and draw him a little closer.

"No, you weren't," I counter, but so gently, the way I might curl my hand around an injured songbird. "You were lying then and you're lying now. Why is it so hard for you to tell me what you want?"

He makes a hollow, desolate sound, half a sigh and half a moan, that prickles the fine hairs on my back – not with fear but familiarity. Where could I have heard such a haunting sound before? The woods, surely, except it's not quite the cry of any animal I can think of, wounded or otherwise. And why does it feel like heartbreak?

"Because," he says hoarsely, "because I want –"

He breaks off suddenly with a slight jerk of his face against my throat. "I-I want _too_ much," he explains, leaning back just enough to meet my eyes, and his voice is a little stronger, albeit rueful. "There's nothing you could offer me that I wouldn't want, Katniss."

I consider the possibilities amid a cacophony of wild heartbeats.

Deerskin. Antlers. Pine bark.

Sweetheart ribbons, twined gaily about a present harvested from the depths of a wild wood.

Merry kit-kisses sprinkled over his beloved face and blissful beak-nuzzles burrowing into the musky hollow of his throat.

 _Real_ kisses, pressed squarely on that soft, sweet mouth.

I catch my breath with a little squeak because _that_ , I know, is too far, and yet Peeta seemed so overwhelmingly _happy_ afterward, clinging to me in the snow and rocking me against him and whispering such exquisite things – things that make me tremble and ache even now – simply because I kissed him and promised future kisses.

 _Because he needs love,_ I realize. He's the very embodiment of it – like the sun, beaming his nourishing golden light on everyone in his wake – but he gets so little in return. He only has Pollux and Lavinia now and while they adore him, their affection is primarily exchanged with each other. He has no mother or sister or sweetheart to rub his feet or shoulders after a hard day's work, to make him a fortifying meal or a hot bath or even to turn back his covers at night.

There's only me, a strange, wild Seam girl who loves him to the roots of her hair and the marrow of her bones, who pounces and nips at him like a kit in her den – and he _adores_ it.

He adores _me_.

I draw him close once more and lean down to rest my cheek on his curls. "I'll give you anything, Peeta," I tell him softly. " _Everything._ I have so little to offer, but it's yours if you want it – all of it."

 _Always and entirely yours,_ I add silently. _Whole and entire._

"Oh Katniss," he sighs against my throat. "You can't imagine how I want it."

I smile to myself, caressing his nape and firmly ignoring the hollow, heavy ache kindling low in my belly – the thing that made me sink and rub against his groin earlier, that even now is urging me to scoot forward a half-inch and find that comforting lump in his trousers again. There's little enough I can offer my boy – well and truly offer – but he wants it all and he shall have it.

I inch back just enough to press a small kiss to his temple. "Does that include your breakfast?" I tease, and Peeta moans in reply.

"Yes please!" he says, leaning back to reveal a crooked grin and bright, hungry eyes. "I don't think I've ever been so excited for a meal in all my life."

I blush at this false praise, however sincerely intended. Peeta's had sixteen years of Harvest Festivals, New Year's celebrations, and even, over the past six months, Capitol-quality feasts to look forward to. A simple breakfast prepared by an untrained cook, however rich and filling, is nothing to get excited about.

I climb off his lap and lead him the few steps to the kitchen, reaching impulsively for his hand to tug him through the doorway. I'm giddy with anticipation, with love for my boy and pride in what I've prepared for him, and Peeta's reaction upon seeing the table does not disappoint.

"Biscuits and gravy!" he cries with the pure, unfeigned delight of a child. "Cream gravy with sausage; that's my favorite, and – _eggy in a basket!_ " His voice soars up in a squeal as he bounds forward for a closer look, pulling me along with him. "You made eggy in a basket, Katniss!" he exclaims, turning to me, and his face is radiant with joy. "I don't think I've had that since Grandma Lydda died. How did you know?"

I duck my head, my cheeks feverish with pleasure. "Grandpa Asa loved it," I tell him, "and Dad used to make it too. We called it 'egg in a nest' a-and I –"

"You griddled the bread!" he interjects, looking back at the table as though he just solved a niggling riddle. "Grandma Lydda just used ordinary toast – it was quick and easy – but this looks so much _better!_ "

"I hope I did okay on that," I warn. "I've never used vanilla extract before and I didn't want to use up too much of something so precious – and I probably used way too much nutmeg –"

"Not possible," he says happily, whirling back to face me. "I love nutmeg so much."

"I know you do," I remind him gently, and he hugs me to him with a choked little laugh. "Oh Katniss," he says, for probably the fiftieth time today, and I love the sound of it every bit as much as the first time. "How did you know? Eggy and biscuits and –" I feel him perk up, spying something else over my shoulder. "Fried potatoes with bacon!" he crows. " _Ohhh!_ "

I chuckle at his exclamation, all anticipation and hunger and bliss. "There's cranberry cider too," I inform him, as casually as I can manage. "I mean, not _real_ cranberry cider – just some apple cider simmered with cranberries and a little ginger –"

" _Perfect,_ " he moans, hugging me so tightly that I can barely draw breath. "It's perfect, Katniss. _You're_ perfect."

I try to laugh this aside but it's too hard with my powerful sweetheart squeezing the living daylights out of me, so instead I croak, "I'm _not_ , you know. I-I just care about you. And I listen."

"You _do_ ," he breathes, drawing back carefully to meet my eyes. "You remembered all the things I like."

"Not quite," I admit, feeling a little shamed beneath the full glow of those bright eyes and sweet words. "I mean, I _remembered_ cream-coffee, I'm just no good at making it – not the way you do – so I warmed up the cider instead."

Peeta brushes my flushed cheek with an affectionate hand. "Something tells me that, given free rein in the kitchen, you'd whip up better cream-coffee than I ever could," he says. "Come, little vixen: come and eat with me."

I didn't make myself a plate of food but this only deters Peeta for about two seconds. "No plate for yourself?" he puzzles, then, "Share with me!" he insists, settling into a chair and tugging me merrily into his lap.

"This isn't going to work," I inform him with a laugh. "You can't even _see_ your food, silly gander, let alone reach it." I may be small and slight but I'm quite wide enough to block the platter, and we're sharing a kitchen chair, not an armchair. There's no place to hunker back to, so Peeta can reach around me for forkfuls of food.

He gives a disgruntled chuckle and reaches sideways to grab another chair and pull it flush against the side of his, then he gently shifts me over into it and scoops up my legs in their festive flannel cocoon to lie across his thighs. "Better?" he wonders, and I laugh.

"We _can_ eat in the living room, if you'd rather," I remind him.

"No, you set up breakfast here," he says firmly, "and _beautifully,_ if I haven't already said so. And anyway, you said something about a cuddle-nest, and I don't like to spoil surprises."

"All I did was put a blanket in the armchair," I tell him impishly. "Well, _two_ blankets, the regular wool ones, to wrap yourself up in, and I'm going to go back up to my bed."

He looks at me as though I just punched him in the gut and broke his heart all at once, only to quickly veil it behind a sensible, considering sort of frown. "Thank you, Katniss," he says, genuinely enough, if a little stiffly. "That, um…that sounds really nice. I can do some sketching by the fire and –"

I lean over with a giggle to peck his cheek with my nose. "Silly boy," I chide affectionately, "I'm _kidding._ You can't cuddle all by yourself, and anyway: why would I ever go back to bed in the middle of the morning unless –"

I break off in a hot blush beneath his hopeful, wide-eyed gaze. If my joke about being alone in the armchair devastated him, this briefest affirmation to the contrary has made him joyous beyond measure.

"Unless?" he prompts eagerly, cradling my knee with one strong hand as he leans toward me for my reply, and I blush hotter still.

"Unless…I was going to curl up with _you_ ," I confess, squeezing my eyes shut in mortification, but Peeta gives a jubilant laugh and seizes me in a snug one-armed hug.

"Little vixen," he sighs, "you can curl up with me anytime you want – or-or _not_ ," he adds quickly. "If you don't want to."

"Mmm," I croon against his cheek, trying to imagine an occasion when I _wouldn't_ want to be buried in thick furs and nestled deeply into the contours of this powerful, precious body. "That sounds fair."

He chuckles softly and leans back into his seat. "You sound sleepy already," he says, mistaking my contentment for drowsiness. "You worked so hard on breakfast, sweetheart. Would you like to lie down and I can bring you a plate of food?"

It's a delicious thought but I'm not truly tired, just eager to be wrapped up in soft coverlets and my sweet boy. "I'm okay," I assure him. "Let's just eat here. Less to get in the way of snuggling," I add without thinking and am mortified to hear the words aloud, but Peeta makes a plaintive little sound, half pleasure and half anticipation, and presses his cheek against mine.

"Works for me," he says, and his voice breaks a little. "That sounds _so_ nice."

I smother my elation at the thought of how happy – almost _hungry_ – Peeta sounds for more time in each other's arms. It's a true hunger in its own way; I feel it too, keenly.

Strange, to develop such a powerful appetite for something you've never really had before.

He cuts the first forkful of biscuit and gravy and, to my surprise, offers it to me. "That's yours," I remind him, but he shakes his head with a smile and brings it to my mouth. "You didn't steal a single bite while you were cooking, did you?" he says, playfully nudging my lips with the fork till I open them and accept the bite.

I roll the heady scoop of flaky biscuit, peppery cream gravy, and fiery sausage around my mouth, savoring the successful mix of flavors with no little pride, and shake my head. "I tasted the gravy to make sure it was flavorful enough," I reply "and a sip of the cider for the same reason, but I didn't want to take more than that. I made all of this for _you_ ," I remind him, and he veritably glows in response.

"My sweet, selfless vixen," he says. "Next time have all you want – and make a plate for yourself too, come to it."

"And miss the chance to share with you?" I wonder with a crooked smile, and he chuckles.

"Okay, forget the plate," he concedes. "We can share one plate for the rest of time –"

"And one cup," I chime in.

"– and one cup," he agrees. "But you _have_ to steal tastes of everything, Katniss. It's what cooks _do_ , honest," he says. "My dad, Grandma Lydda, Aunt Rooba… It helps you figure out if you need to add anything else to the dish, as you know, but it also keeps you going. Cooking is hard work, after all."

I look at those strong hands that cut paths through snowbanks and stoke fires and prepare the most wonderful meals and my heart gives a little gush of love. "You work _so_ hard," I murmur, taking his free hand in both of mine, and he blushes wildly but doesn't try to free himself.

"I _want_ to," he reminds me, curling his hand against mine. "I like making you meals – like doing _everything_ for you, Katniss. It…it doesn't feel like work," he says simply, "doing things for you."

"I feel the same way," I tell him. "I, um…I'm not sure I've ever been happier than when I made this meal for you."

I leave out the fact that I love him to the very depths of my soul, of course, and that I was flying with elation after our cuddling and kisses in the snow, and Peeta gazes back at me as though I've just handed him another shimmering sliver of the moon he wants so badly.

"What a predicament," he says raggedly. "I want to cook for you so much, but if it makes you this happy – so happy that you _sing_ –" His voice breaks. "I-I don't know what to do," he says, and he looks genuinely distressed by the decision.

I chuckle and squeeze his hand. "Taste my cooking first, sweet boy, before you make up your mind," I tease. "I'm not terrible but I surely can't hold a candle to you, especially after all the extra practicing you did to impress your sweetheart."

He gazes at me for a long, silent moment. "You really like my cooking, Katniss?" he asks softly.

I give an exasperated laugh. "Of _course_ I do, silly boy!" I exclaim. "I love every single thing you make. How could you ever doubt it?"

His mouth curls in a bittersweet smile. "Then all that extra practice served its purpose," he says strangely, and turns back to his platter.

His first bite, cut from the biscuit as well, is, unsurprisingly, a slow, considering one – not unlike the way I ate the bite he gave me, only this time it ends with a moan. "Oh _Katniss_ ," he breathes. "This tastes like _heaven._ "

"Don't flatter me," I tell him, but he doesn't stop to argue. His hand slips from mine to steady the platter and suddenly he's devouring the biscuit, bite after gravy-soaked bite shoveled into a wide mouth, then chewed and swallowed with audible relish before eagerly – almost frantically – cutting another bite.

I've never seen Peeta eat like this, not even in the arena. He gobbles up the first biscuit like he's never eaten before in his life, then he shifts to take careful first bites of everything else on the platter, along with a sip of the cranberry cider, to a chorus of pleasurable little groans. "Oh Katniss _,_ " he says, over and over again, between the ensuing greedy gulps and grunts and swallows. "Oh Katniss, Katniss, _Katniss,_ " he chants. "Katniss, sweetheart…this is so _good_."

I try to laugh at his enthusiasm but it doesn't feel like a laughing matter; not at all. Peeta's eating like a cross between a starving man and something that makes my neck and chest flush and the place between my legs feel damp. Something that's stirring up my innermost secret parts just as fiercely as my New Year's dream of Peeta's shy fingers on my bare breast, and yet I can't quite identify it.

 _Like a lover,_ I realize suddenly, _simultaneously savoring and devouring what lies before him._ My parents had moments like that; stolen, unguarded ones when they thought I couldn't see or was too young to care, and it's the way boys and girls usually kiss against the school wall and behind the Hob. Hungrily – no, _voraciously._

I clear my throat and attempt a joke because if I don't say something soon I'll either run away and hide till suppertime or bring my lips to Peeta's neck to satisfy their own escalating hunger. "A-Are you – did you still want to share that with me?" I ask, suddenly and acutely aware of the heat of his legs beneath mine. "B-Because I'm happy to make up my own plate and –"

Peeta immediately drops his fork and turns to me with an expression so full of shame that my heart cries out in reply. "Katniss," he croaks. "I-I didn't mean…" He looks slowly back at the platter, all but wiped clean, and makes a small horrified sound. "How could I be so _greedy_?" he whispers, burying his face in his hands, but I quickly draw them away again.

"You're _hungry,_ silly gander, not greedy," I tell him, giving his hands an emphatic squeeze before placing them back on the table, to either side of his platter. "And rightly so, after all the work you've done just this morning. And even if you _were_ to be greedy," I add quickly, "it would be absolutely fine because I made all of this _for you_. I should've just given you a fork and let you gobble every last plate clean in turn."

He shakes his head and inches the nearly-empty platter several deliberate inches toward me. "I'm so sorry, Katniss," he says. "I promised to share – _told_ you to share with me – and then promptly ate all your food."

"There's plenty left," I point out and steal his fork to take one of the bread circles – the cut-out nest pieces, griddled in the same sweet batter for an extra treat – and nibble at it demonstratively. "No vixens going hungry here," I tell him with an over-wide, foxy grin.

"But there _is_ a greedy gosling," he says miserably. "One small, fierce greedy gosling who expressly told me to get up extra early this morning to make her breakfast, but instead I went out in the snow and told her to make breakfast for _me_."

"I've _always_ been willing to cook for you," I remind him, narrowly resisting the urge to give him a good shake about the shoulders to punctuate this truth. "Back when you first asked me to come and live with you, I offered you _everything_ but all you wanted was my company."

"The more fool me," he says with stark self-deprecation but there's a playful note creeping beneath it now. "I chose the desire to feed you over _this!_ "

His humor, though faint, is catching. "It's not too late," I tease. "I can cook for you _anytime_ , you know."

He gazes at the table, then at me for a long searching moment. "You swear this makes you happy?" he says at last.

"Of course," I reply, frankly and without hesitation. "Why would I lie?"

His mouth quirks in a wry expression and he holds up a hand. "To not hurt my feelings," he ticks off. "To repay a debt. To –"

I close my hand around his. "It makes me happy, Peeta," I tell him firmly, looking him in the eye to banish any doubt. "Happier than you can imagine. Happier than I can remember ever being before."

His head sinks a little in a sigh and I lean in to meet it, resting my forehead against his, almost without thought. "Is it so hard to believe?" I wonder softly, shifting my grip on his hand to thread my fingers through his.

He sighs again, even deeper this time, and gently butts his forehead against mine. "No," he says at last. "It's not hard to believe at all.

"I, um… I used to eat a lot of my mom's cooking," he explains in a small, quiet voice. "She's actually a really good cook but…her meals always left me feeling empty, somehow. Dad could make the same meal the exact same way and it would be totally different. You could taste the affection; it filled you up, somehow."

"I know what you mean," I answer with a smile, tipping my face just enough to brush noses with him. "Your food tastes of the most wonderful things, every last bite of it. Things like comfort and laughter and autumn sunsets," I explain, neatly leaving off the thing I love most. The thing that flows out of him in golden waves and bathes everything in its gentle glow but can never _ever_ belong to me.

He chuckles faintly. "That's not surprising," he says. "I mean, it's a little surprising that you could taste such specific things, not that they were there."

"Food is like a language with you," I tell him, leaning back to meet his eyes. "It took me a little while to learn it, but now it's almost like looking at one of your pictures or hearing you tell a beautiful story."

His free hand reaches up to brush my cheek. "You're too clever by half, Katniss Everdeen," he says softly. "Is that how you did it?"

I shake my head in puzzlement. "Did what?" I wonder.

He takes one beribboned braid between his thumb and forefinger and gently follows the silky red strand from root to tail. "This meal tastes like _happiness,_ " he murmurs, curling the tail of my braid around his fingertip. "It's _bursting_ with it, actually; with happiness and affection and…a-and –" He breaks off with a sharp, strange cry, quickly stifled. "With…other wonderful things," he says hoarsely.

 _That's_ _where the extra love went,_ I realize in horror. _There was never a chance to store it away. It spilled out of me and right into his food._

For a brief, mad moment I wonder if I've poisoned him somehow. If I've drugged or sickened this precious boy by pouring enough love into his food to choke the veriest glutton.

"It tastes like _home_ ," he goes on, "but…like a home I've never known before. A rich and wondrous place," he breathes, "that might not even exist, or maybe never will."

My breath catches in something like a whimper because I know what he tasted in this meal; what streamed through my fingertips as they cracked and sliced and stirred and fell like rain in the silver motes of my song: _our_ home – this beautiful house in the woods – but the way that _I_ see it. Pine smoke and cider and hearty rabbit stew, furs and skins and glorious old tales and a wild vixen with fairy blood who loves a golden prince with all her might.

He's tasting my hunger for him: to hold him close and kiss him breathless, my mouth moving eagerly over every inch of his sweet, soft skin. To share bread and wine and lie together as husband and wife, merging our bodies with breathless, halting tenderness. To give him kits and chicks, kindled and carried in the secret hearth at the root of my belly.

Except he doesn't know that. The images swirling through each bite – downy fox kits tumbling from eggshells of shimmering pearl, silky-furred goslings birthed from a womb and cradled to a dusky breast, a nest of catkin-studded willow branches threaded with miles of scarlet ribbon and lined with deerskin and furs and dandelion down – are straight out of the strangest folktale.

And he can't ever be allowed to guess it. I have to guard my heart and hands more carefully, especially in these moments of joyous abandon, lest they betray the full appalling truth and he's forced to send me away forever.

"It _will_ exist, Peeta," I vow, thinking of his Seam sweetheart and swallowing back my grief as I press my forehead against his. "One day, very soon. A home where you're cherished and adored, every last part of you. It's close," I soothe, letting a single slender thread of the truth – my love for him – seep through in my voice. " _So_ close, my sweet boy."

He leans back with a sad smile to meet my eyes. "I can wait," he says softly. "I could wait a hundred years if that place lay on the other side of it."

I try to picture this sturdy Merchant boy cradling a newly hatched kitling in the bowl of a willow-cradle and wish that it wasn't so easy, nor so heartbreakingly beautiful. "Not half so long as that," I promise, mentally exchanging the kitling for a black- or golden-haired infant in turn – the likely offspring of his marriage – and finding it no less natural or painful. "And in the meantime I'll give you as much of it – of that home," I add quickly. "Of that…that _happiness –_ as I can."

"You've already given me _so_ much of it," he murmurs. "So much more than you realize, Katniss. I think the full measure might well stop my heart."

I force a clumsy chuckle. "Well, we don't want that," I say. "I'll aim for seventy-five percent happiness."

To my surprise this makes him laugh in turn, a bright, genuine chuckle that crinkles his eyes at the corners. "You're nearing eighty already at the _least_ , gosling mine," he insists. "Throw in a cuddle-nest and it's a solid eighty-five."

I laugh heartily and the spell is broken, at least for the moment. "The cuddle-nest is a cert," I assure him. "This gosling's breakfast, however, appears to be a doubtful prospect –"

"Come here, you," he growls playfully and hauls me up into his lap again, bringing my back flush against his chest. "I knew I had the right idea to begin with," he says, wrapping his arms around my waist like a belt of warm steel. "Now you can have all you want and you get to decide when – or if – I get any more bites."

"You'll get bites," I assure him. "All the bites you could possibly want. I want to keep my toes, after all."

"I was going to ask about those," he says. "The only other thing I asked for and you couldn't be bothered to include them in your menu. Miserly vixen," he scolds teasingly and I feel his mouth at my right shoulder, taking a mock-bite against the flannel, the way you pretend-gobble at a small child.

The place between my legs pulses faintly and I reach back to cup his downy-curled head and draw it over to my nape. "I knew I should've started with your beak," I murmur and win a ragged sigh in response.

"Not my beak, _please_ ," he whines against the sensitive ridge of my spine. "I need it for gobbling up eggy and biscuits and unwary vixens – and of course, for crowing your praises."

"Are you a gander, a tom, or a rooster?" I tease, but because I love and want all of the things he just listed to take place, I don't bother to protest further.

The rest of the meal is largely uneventful, if pleasant beyond imagining. Peeta insists that I eat an entire platterful before he'll let me off his lap – and snugs his arms about my ribs to enforce the order – but I only manage small portions of each dish. There's something other than hunger – hunger for _food_ – getting in the way of my stomach, and while everything tastes as wonderful as I'd hoped, I eat about a third of what I'd typically put away, even at the lightest of meals at Peeta's house. It's like I'm hungry for something else, _anticipating_ something else, and my body's not interested in the alternatives.

I finally slink off his lap, revealing a small expanse of platters still holding generous portions of food, to a troubled frown from Peeta. "Are you sure you didn't eat more before I came in?" he puzzles, even though he knows full well that I took only tiny tasting bites before setting the table for him and he felt every one of the many bites I took in his lap with his arms enclosing my middle. "You didn't have to save me so much."

That was only part of it, of course, but I shrug and allow him to cut more bites of everything and feed them to me, all tenderness and worry, soft encouragements and gentle eyes. To be honest, I don't have much of an appetite at all this morning but I can't not accept food from Peeta's hands, and I eat a respectable serving of each dish under his care – and enjoy it.

I made just enough for the pair of us to finish it all, with Peeta eating everything that remains after I firmly insist that I'm full, so there's nothing to put away and only a few platters and forks and one cup to wash. I consider doing that now, with or without Peeta's help, but the cuddle-nest is calling and to Peeta even more than me. Snow-shoveling coupled with this glut of hearty food has left him pleasantly droopy, and I help him to his feet with a smile.

"Almost naptime," I promise. "I made a special place for you, remember?"

"For _us_ ," he corrects, curling his hand around mine with more wakefulness than I thought he possessed in this moment. "You promised snuggling."

Delight skitters out of me in a merry giggle. "So I did," I agree, curling my hand around his in turn, and snatch one of the still-burning candles for good measure. It's one of the New Year's candles, with bits of spices embedded in the golden beeswax, and falling asleep to the scent of warm spiced honey sounds too exquisite not to try.

I head toward the living room, tugging drowsy Peeta behind me like a wayward duckling, feeling a little silly and ridiculously happy. My boy wants to snuggle with me and I've made a place for us to do just that in a matter of moments.

We're on the wrong side of the house to see the sunrise but its pale gold light is filtering through the woods and around the house to skip across the frozen lake on glittering fairy-feet. It's a little early for Peeta's nap; _deliciously_ early still, with more than enough time before lunch to cuddle and doze and still work on the deerskin – if I can manage to make myself leave Peeta's arms.

I lead him to the sofa, almost beside myself with glee to present our cuddle-nest. "As promised," I begin, only to look at it – _really_ look for the first time – and drop his hand with a distressed little squeak.

"What's wrong?" Peeta asks, turning to me and quickly snatching the candle from my other hand – the likeliest culprit – and discarding it on the low table. "Did the wax spill over?' he wonders, taking my hand in both of his and carefully turning it every which way to look for wounds. "Did you burn yourself, little sweetheart?"

I shake my head but can't find the words – _daren't_ find the words – to explain.

I've turned the sofa into a plush lover's bed and brazenly marched my unwitting sweetheart straight to it.

People – men and women – don't lie down together in the middle of the day. That is, they _might_ , but not for cuddling and a few stolen hours of extra slumber.

I was so young – surely too young to remember – but on many a Sunday afternoon, especially before Prim was born, if it was too cold or dangerous for his weekly trip to the woods my father would tuck me into bed after lunch with a kiss and a song or a folktale and then he and my mother would go to their own bed or some other place in the house – a hearthrug once, I recall vaguely, spread so close to the flames that it should have burned them – to make love in the drowsy midday sunlight. They so rarely saw each other's body by daylight, _that_ I recall clearly, between Dad's work in the mines and the necessity of spending his Sundays in the woods, and those moments were languid, unhurried and drenched with bliss. Pale hair turned to a rippling pool of white-gold spilling over dingy pillows or soot-stained floorboards while black hair brushed fair skin like willow branches dusting the surface of the lake.

It was a strange but beautiful thing, witnessing the union of my parents' bodies. It should have been crude, perhaps even frightening, but there was so much love in the act.

The way it would be if I ever lay naked with my boy.

A pool of downy golden curls – no, a lake of unbound black hair – on a pillow the color of sunset and a pale face crowned with yellow curls kissing a tender path over skin the color of a mourning dove's breast.

"Katniss, what's wrong?" Peeta asks again, his sweet, concerned voice breaking into the dream, but of course I can't tell him, not any of it.

"I-I think I'm going upstairs after all," I say, tugging my hand free of his and making a helpless gesture toward the stairs. "Or-or outside, maybe. I-I –"

"Shh," he soothes, almost suddenly, his eyes soft with a strange understanding, and he doesn't try to touch me or take my hand again. "It's okay," he assures me. "Absolutely, entirely okay.

"Tell you what," he suggests gently, "it's almost my naptime anyway, so I'll lay down in this wonderful cozy nest that you built, little songbird, and if you change your mind you can crawl in with me whenever you want, okay?"

I realize what he's doing then and it's so sweet it makes my heart hurt. He's remembering last night when I fled my perch in his lap – remembering _all_ the times I've inexplicably fled from his touch when just a half-second before I'd pressed into it. Peeta knows I'm a wild thing and is giving me the choice to come to him or not, to touch and be touched, or not, never mind how eagerly I planned for and told him about – even _promised_ him – this cuddle-nest.

I draw a slow breath. It's less terrifying, somehow – less presumptuous, less…provocative – to think of crawling in with him once he's settled. "I, um…" I croak, and Peeta shushes me with a tender smile and a shake of his head. "You don't have to explain, little wildling," he says. "Your trust is a priceless gift, never _ever_ taken for granted, and every demonstration of it is equally precious.

"Remember," he quotes softly, those beautiful words I never heard my father say: "a boy learns patience while a bird learns trust, but in the end both are tamed."

As comforting as this is to hear, it's miserable and embarrassing at the same time because that's not the reason, not at all. "I trust you, Peeta," I whisper. "With all my heart, I trust you."

It's _me_ that I don't trust. Me who wants more, other, strange things that I can't begin to comprehend, who can't help seeing this nest as a lover's den.

"Katniss," he says, "it's okay. You don't have to say anything." He half-reaches for me, as though he wants to touch my cheek or my braid but thinks better of it, expecting me to flinch or pull away from the caress, and I catch his hand firmly with both of mine before he can draw it back – an act that wins a small smile.

"I love the nest and I'd love for us to share it," he murmurs, gazing between us at where our hands are joined. "But only if you want."

"But I _do_ want," I whimper, squeezing my eyes shut to hide from my own admission. "Maybe…m-maybe if you got in first?" I suggest, opening my eyes a hesitant crack for his response.

"Of course," he says, his smile growing, and he brings my hands to his mouth for a quick shy kiss over both sets of knuckles before gently releasing me and going to the sofa. My fox fur coverlet serves as the topmost layer of the nest and he draws it back as carefully as if it were woven of dewdrops and spidersilk. "This is the den of a little fox," he remarks lightly, as though to himself. "How warm and snug she's made it with her clever paws! This lonely gander is cold and foolish with drowsiness and good food. Surely it would be safe for me to lie down here awhile and warm my beak upon her pillows."

I bring a hand to my mouth, overcome by this unexpected, adorable approach.

He lifts the fox fur and climbs beneath it, stretching out and wriggling a little, like a kit or cub, to find just the right place. " _Oh,_ this is lovely!" he sighs, plumping a deerskin pillow beneath his head and very deliberately not looking at me. "What a huntress my hostess is, to furnish her bed with furs and skins of all kinds. I shall lay but a little," he declares with a genuine yawn. "But surely I shall be in no danger here, even should she return before I wake. What interest could there be in a plump, unwitting gander for a vixen who rose before dawn and ate the merest thimbleful at breakfast?"

His face is pressed blissfully against the deerskin and down and he opens one eye to look at me – one bright, beloved, merry blue eye – and I am done for. The strange tryst-like feel of the nest is long gone, banished by a sweet, silver-tongued boy with a love for old tales.

I tip my head, considering, and pad silently out to the mudroom. I suspect my gander is disappointed by this decision, though he needn't be – and won't, in another moment.

I take his bearskin from its hook and stagger a little beneath its heft. For all the times I've been wrapped in it, I've never had to support the full weight by myself, and I wonder whether wearing such a heavy garment whenever he's outside for any length of time has actually made Peeta even stronger.

The hem is still a little damp from shoveling – or, more likely, from all that time he spent lying in the snow beneath a greedy vixen – but that's of little consequence. I drape the length of lush fur across my arms and pad back into the living room. "Stars o' my!" I exclaim quietly. "'Tis a _goose_ in my nest, plump and unwitting! I am a small fox and very hungry from my labors, but I am cold too. I could pluck off all his down and make a soft bed of it, then gobble him up for good measure, but how _long_ this would take! And I am _so_ very weary."

I tiptoe closer. Peeta's eyes are squeezed determinedly closed but his mouth is curving up into a giddy smile. "I suppose I could make do with the down still on the gander," I concede with a disappointed sigh. "So warm he'll be with a beating heart, and I could burrow myself amongst his feathers. He's clearly too foolish and lazy to perceive any danger in sharing a nest with a vixen, and I can gobble him up when I wake."

I spread the bearskin over Peeta then draw both it and the fox fur back. He still hasn't moved or opened his beautiful eyes but his smile is now almost blinding. "How he dreams!" I marvel. "Of sweet corn, I suppose; of tender water-grasses and plump katniss tubers to nibble. Little does he know," I observe slyly, "that it is _he_ who will be gobbled up afore his rest is done!"

Peeta's stretched out his stocky frame to fill the sofa, as well he should, and there's little enough space for me to crawl in beside him.

But of course, I have absolutely no interest in lying beside him.

I carefully ease my thigh over his hips and settle down to lie on top of him, much as we were in the snow – my favorite place: legs parted to hug his thighs with my torso resting fully on his and my face in the curve of his neck – before letting the furs sink over us. Peeta moans softly in response – to my presence or the extra warmth, I can't begin to guess – but still does not move or speak.

"Yes, this a fine place to burrow!" I murmur deliciously into the thermal weave of Peeta's pajama top and slip my arms beneath him, but I misjudge the space – _or do I?_ – and one hand slips between the hem of his shirt and the bare skin of his back.

 _Oh!_ I cry silently as my very being shatters with bliss. _Oh oh_ OH!

I've never felt anything so wonderful in my life and the breath skitters out of me in a mix of terror and elation, a sound echoed almost identically by Peeta, who started at the touch. I want this more than breath: warm, soft Peeta-skin beneath my little hands, to caress and savor and tickle with dancing mousekin fingers, but I _can't._

But I can't pull away either. The hunger – touch-hunger – is too strong. My fingers have finally located what they want and aren't about to let it go, even though the rest of my arm is twitching with desperation to withdraw.

"I believe I have been caught," Peeta observes raggedly. "The vixen has returned and has me in her power. If only –" His voice breaks in something that might be either pain or pleasure and he tries again. "If only she knew that I was hers to command," he whispers, "long before she found me in her den."

I lift my face from its nest in the sweet hollow of his throat to gaze down at him. His eyes are open now, wide and dark as a kitten's and full of something that transcends happiness. "Hello, foolish gander," I say.

"Hello, clever vixen," he replies, so softly. "Which would you like first: my down, my flesh, or my still-beating heart?"

"I want you all," I whisper with tremulous hope and greed. "And all _of_ you."

I feel him tremble against my hands – one on fabric, one on skin – and wonder how a small wild girl could be capable of so deeply terrifying a powerful young bear of a boy.

"Well," he says hoarsely, "here I am."

I dip my head and place a kiss over his breastbone, the impenetrable rock face guarding the thing I want most of all, and his arms enfold me desperately in warmth and musk and a deep, plaintive groan, as full of grief as pleasure.

"Katniss," he whispers. " _Oh,_ little Katniss, my songbird, my vixen –"

"Please don't get married," I plead – stupidly, but it's all I can think of in this moment of almost suffocating bliss: its inevitable end. "Give me five, ten – fifteen years," I beg.

Fifteen years of this will pass in an eyeblink. He'll only be thirty-one then, almost thirty-two; not even starting to gray. Late to marry in Twelve, perhaps, and almost too late for his wife to conceive, but not with good food and herbs and even medicines available to help.

He laughs, a wry and ragged sound. "Katniss, _all_ of my days are yours to command," he murmurs. "If I'm allowed a hundred years you'll own them all, every last minute of every precious hour, to spend in whichever way you choose."

I laugh in response but it's a humorless sound – a quick alternative to the sob that's pounding at my lungs from inside, desperate to come out. _Don't tease me,_ I tell him in my mind because I can't bear to say it aloud, or hear his response. _It's not enough to live beside you, to hunt and tan hides and sew warm things for you, to share meals or even cook for you – sustaining, if humble, fare filled with the extra nourishment of my love. Not once your bride is here, drinking up your kisses and carrying your love in her womb._

"I'm a jealous fox," I tell him. "Jealous the way it used to mean, and I want this gander all to myself."

In a move worthy of a wrestling champion – not the runner-up – Peeta rolls up onto his side, quickly but carefully, so I'm pinned between his powerful body and the back of the sofa, with one leg caught fast beneath his ribs.

"Has no one ever told you, wild thing," he murmurs, his face aglow with humor and sheer delight, "that mouse is goose for such as you are and shall cause less grief?"

"Mouse!" I scoff, even as I tug instinctively – and futilely – to free my leg. "Whatever should I do with a _mouse_? The merest mouthful of meat and barely enough fur to warm a single pad of one paw!"

"Ah yes," he says merrily, his bright eyes gleaming as delight turns to glee. "Your greed has made you the greater fool, vixen, for now _at last_ I shall claim my prize!" He rolls onto his back, pinioning my right leg fully beneath his warm bulk, then he catches hold of my left leg and, bending the knee back toward me, brings my foot to rest on his chest.

"Oho!" he cries, flexing my foot with his strong thumbs to place my toes in front of his face. "What have we here? Five perfect vixen toes! Ripe gooseberries they are," he proclaims, "or rather, four plump gooseberries – " he counts them with a fingertip, beginning with the smallest – "and one round little plum!" He licks his lips and waggles his eyebrows at me. "Shall I gobble them all up this very instant," he wonders giddily, "or shall I begin with a single bite and save the rest for later, as you meant to do with me?"

His breath is hot and moist on my toes and the hem of my nightgown has slid up to bare that leg to the knee. I shake my head, desperate for freedom and for his mouth all at once, and Peeta pounces, drawing my foot down with cupped hands and closing his lips around the tender pad of my little toe with a playful gobbling sound, followed by quick, fluttering strokes with the tip of his tongue.

I squeal and giggle and thrash, tugging wildly at my ankle with both hands, but Peeta's hold is too strong, and with my other leg pinned beneath him I have no leverage at all. He proceeds to nibble at each of my toes in turn, greedily and with visible relish: his eyes closed, his mouth like a minnow's – and yet nothing like a minnow's – and his tongue scaling the breadth of each round toe pad in rapid, hungry laps.

I can do nothing but writhe in his hold and laugh desperately while the place between my legs warms and pulses and aches. There's a growing dampness there that confuses and frightens me even as it feels _wonderful_ , or like the start of something _impossibly_ wonderful, and I can't bear another second of it.

"Stop!" I plead through a frantic little laugh. "Oh, _please_ stop!"

He does, of course – Peeta's too gentle-hearted to ignore the cries of a trapped wild thing – but he doesn't release my foot. "Stop when I've only just claimed my prize?" he teases, nuzzling my toes with his nose, and he sounds a little out of breath, as though _he_ 's the one who's been struggling all this while. "I warned you to eat my beak first, overconfident vixen," he reminds me, "and see how I have triumphed by your refusal!"

He leans up to press a wet open-mouthed kiss to my big toe and I whimper softly. The place between my legs is half pressed against his thigh because of our pose and I can't help wondering if rubbing against that solid warmth might appease the strange hunger.

" _Please,_ " I beg, because continued devotion to my toes, however exquisite in its way, will only make the ache unbearable, and rubbing against Peeta will only make him recoil in horror, maybe even repulsion. I can't lose this exquisite new thing we've just found together; this place of ganders and vixens, of shared nests and passionate hugs and mouths moving playfully against each other's skin.

Peeta regards me silently for several moments, searching my face for signs of genuine distress. "Your cause moves me to pity, vixen mine," he says at last, a little grandly. "I will relinquish all ten toes: these five delectable fruits –" he counts them again carefully with a fingertip – "and the other five I have in keeping –" he rolls his back against the leg beneath him with a grin – "but you must pay me a forfeit for your freedom."

 _Kisses!_ I think wildly. Kisses are the only forfeit I know of, and one I would gladly pay to be free of this delicious agony. Can Peeta possibly want another kiss from me, let alone so soon?

"Anything," I promise him in a rush of breath. "Unto half of my kingdom, greedy gander."

He raises his brows in surprise. "Your domain is vast, little wild queen," he remarks, "rich with pines and furs and the bounty of fruiting trees, but I crave another treasure – indeed, a greater one."

My heart beats so fast and fierce against my eardrums that I'm certain I'll be deaf in a moment. " _Anything,_ " I whisper. "Anything you can dream of. I'll give it freely, whatever you want."

Peeta gazes at me with a sad sort of disbelief, as though I can't possibly mean what I've said and certainly don't intend to give him whatever precious thing he wants so badly – a thing I can't even begin to guess at. What can this boy, who tries to refuse my gifts at every turn, possibly want from me at this moment? What could I possibly give him that he would consider a true treasure?

"I want a song," he blurts, his expression suddenly and absolutely terrified. "One song, any song you wish, sung here and now and just for me."

I frown to hide my disappointment. "That is a small price," I tell him, "and one easily paid. But do you wish for nothing else?"

"I wish for _everything_ else," he answers simply. "But your forfeit is a song. Will you pay it?"

"Gladly," I tell him without hesitation, and the joy blazing from his eyes makes my heart stumble. "But surely I can give you some further token as well," I insist. "You ask for a pebble when you might have a crown."

He shakes his head. "I ask for a pearl," he whispers, "the rarest and most precious of all."

_I want the moon._

And I know exactly what song to sing.

"Can I…c-could I maybe…hold you while I sing?" I ask, and Peeta gives a quiet moan that I feel as much as hear, a plaintive shiver through my heel where it still presses against his chest. "Or…or is that an unfair condition? It's just…well, it's sort of a lullaby," I explain in a rush. "I-I thought you might fall asleep and – "

" _Yes_ ," Peeta whispers – no, _whimpers_ – his eyes dark with longing. "I would love for you to hold me, Katniss."

He releases my foot and eases my knee out of its bend, letting my leg drape across his thigh, then he slips off the sofa, freeing my trapped right leg from its snug, sweet prison. "Wh-where?" he says, the word little more than a croak. "Where do you…h-how should I –?"

I slink down to lie on my back across the sofa, much as Peeta was doing a moment ago, and beckon him back over. There isn't enough room for us to lie next to each other unless one or both of us is up on our side, but that's not what I want. "Lie down here," I tell him, gesturing at the remaining edge of the cushions – and me.

Of course, Peeta would never just lie down on top of me – his eyes go wide at the suggestion – and I scoot blushingly deeper into the back of the sofa, affording him an extra inch or two at the front.

"Here," I urge, stretching out my arm. "Lay your head on me and I'll put my arms around you. There's more than enough room for both of us, honest."

He sits on the edge of the cushion, eyeing me warily, and I give his shoulders an enthusiastic tug with both hands. There are a few moments of breathy grunts and fumbling and apologies but we finally end up almost exactly as I'd wanted: wrapped snugly in each other's arms, Peeta lying half beside me, half on top on me, with his hip and legs on the cushions and his cheek on my chest – or nearly. That is, it's there but almost hovering, like he's afraid to put the full weight of his head on me.

I suppose my chicken-egg breast makes a mediocre pillow at best.

"Lie _down_ , silly boy," I chuckle, cupping the back of his head and drawing it firmly toward my shoulder, and he allows it with a deep exhalation, sinking down to rest his face at the base of my throat and warming my neck with his crown of curls.

"That's better," I sigh and cradle him as close as I can, leaning up to kiss the top of his head. His hair smells so good that my womb aches.

"A-Are you comfortable?" I croak, rocking him slightly against me. "Can you fall asleep like this?"

"I expect I could die like this," he says hoarsely. "And I'm a little afraid that I might."

"Not on my watch," I reply, perhaps too fiercely for the context, but I'll abide no suggestion of my beloved dying, let alone in this precious moment when I've finally got him so exquisitely close. "Close your little eyes, gosling mine," I soothe, a tender parroting of his endearment from earlier. "Let me sing you to sleep."

The words trigger another deep ache, a hunger not merely for Peeta and the act that would unite our bodies – no, our very _beings_ – but also the child that such an act would create. A small yellow-curled boy or black-braided girl, lying between us in my bed of deerskin and furs, begging for just one more story before sleep-time.

 _Gosling mine,_ I echo silently, wistfully, and wish for a half-second that I wasn't holding Peeta so I could bring a hand to my empty belly.

"This was Grandpa Asa's favorite song," I murmur, rubbing my cheek against Peeta's curls. "It's a song for a winter's night: a song about wishing for the impossible while cherishing everything that's given to you."

I kiss his head once more, settle back against the pillows, and sing to my sweetheart, my voice soft and low and spilling over with love:

 _Give me an ear and a watchful eye_  
_Watching me change as the seasons go by_  
_Give me the joy of a loving look  
_ _Give me a story, story book_

 _Give me the love that you'd give to a child_  
_Keep me from hunger, from fear, and from cold_  
_Give me the love that you'd give to a child  
_ _Give me the moon in a silver bowl…_

Peeta's breath is speeding up, not slowing down for slumber, as it should, so I rock him a little, drawing him even closer to me and stroking my chin soothingly against the crown of his head. _Sleep, little jay-chick,_ I coax him silently, _my sweetling, my squirrel kit, my honey bear-cub,_ and sing on:

 _Give me the moon in a silver bowl  
_ _Give me the moon in a silver bowl_

 _Turn back the night and keep me from fright  
_ _And hold me until sleepy wings can unfold_

His breath is catching on the inhale; uneven, ragged, wet…the very last thing I wanted, and I hug him with all my might, cradling his head in the crook of my wing and pressing his face snugly against my chest, the way I'd hold Prim if she was frightened or sad. I can't imagine what's so upsetting about these sweet words, but perhaps those that lie ahead will prove more soothing.

 _What's gone is gone and can't be done over_  
_What's past is past and won't come again_  
_But still there's the love that's shared by true lovers  
_ _And still there's the comfort that's felt among friends_

 _What's gone is gone and can't be done over_  
_What's past is past and won't come again_  
_But just for tonight can we turn out the light_  
_And you'll hold me and tell me again and again  
_ _That you'll give me the moon in a silver bowl…_

The words drift away in the firelit dawn and it's undeniable. The patch of flannel just above my right breast – the place where Peeta's cheek is pressed – is sodden and cold and his breath comes quick and shallow.

My boy is _crying._

"Oh, sweet boy," I whisper, longing to cry myself for having hurt him with the gift he wanted so badly. "I didn't mean to make you sad. I-I thought you might like the song –"

"Little Katniss," he breaks in hoarsely, almost kissing the words into my breastbone. " _Oh_ , little Katniss: I _loved_ your song," he whispers, "every word of it. I'm crying at how _beautiful_ it was. At…at how beautiful _you_ are," he breathes. "Such a fierce and lovely vixen, all silk and teeth and clever, deadly paws, and yet you cradle and nuzzle me as tenderly as your very own kit and sing lullabies to me in a voice lovelier than any bird's. You are more than I ever _dreamed_ , Katniss," he whispers. "More than I ever could have imagined."

"I'm not," I protest weakly, but his words are so sweet and seemingly genuine, almost _naked_ in the emotion beneath. Peeta says overly nice and generous things – kind lies – to me all the time, but this one is impossible to reject, and it frightens me a little for that reason. Or rather, not frighten exactly…it stills and steals my breath and makes me tremble in a place deeper than skin and bone. I feel _found_ , caught,sighted in my hiding place by the most inexperienced hunter, and the wild thing within me is flailing and crying out for escape but I don't know what to do. I want to bolt but there's no threat here, only warmth and kindness, even affection, from the boy I love with all my heart, and so I slowly, carefully, deliberately force my body to relax onto the cushions.

" _Oh…_ " Peeta breathes, a soft, wondrous sigh, and I realize that he felt the change in me, however subtle and suppressed. The boy who knows I'm going to flee almost before I do knows I fought the urge this time, or maybe that it faded of its own accord, and the pleasure in his ragged voice threatens to shatter my heart.

I feel fresh tears, still warm through the damp flannel over my breast. "Please don't cry," I beg him, because if he persists there's only one thing I can think of to staunch these tears and it involves something I've essentially promised to refrain from till his birthday. The forbidden magic of kisses, heady and powerful and not to be administered lightly.

"Oh Katniss," he moans, rubbing his cheek against me, "there's something I want so badly…s-so badly that it _hurts_. Sometimes it feels like I could just reach out and cup it in my hand like a tame sparrow, and sometimes it seems as impossible as catching the wind itself."

I know what he wants, of course, or most of it. Between his beautiful words and stark longing, it practically paints a picture: a picture of a black-braided girl in a red plaid dress, singing like a bird as she cradles their chick-child, or lying naked beside Peeta in that bed of sunset, matching his tender kisses and gestures with her own.

"Shh, sweet boy," I soothe. "Even the wind can be caught – or harnessed, at least."

They "farm" the wind in another district – Three, I think, or could it be Ten with their endless plains? – catching it in enormous turbines and channeling its power to a station below.

"I don't want to harness her," he answers hoarsely. "I want her to be free, wild and happy and safe, but I –" His voice breaks. "I _want_ her too," he whispers. "I want –"

"Shh," I say again, tucking him against me to silence his words, in part because I can't bear to hear them but also because I have a small idea that might bring him comfort. "I know what you want," I tell him gently. "Once upon a time there was a little boy: a baker's son who loved cheese buns and shortbread and birds –"

"I know all about that boy," he breaks in sadly, as though dismissing this suggestion.

"Then you only know half of it," I say, "because there is a girl in this story as well."

"I know about the girl too," he replies, miserably now. "I know everything about her, except what lies on her heart."

I caress what lies on my heart, downy and pale as a newly hatched chick, and feel my lips curve in a smile, safely hidden from Peeta's gaze. "Then listen," I urge him. "Perhaps I can guess.

"Once upon a time there was a girl," I go on, "a small, scrawny sparrow-child with long black braids who lived on the poorest fringe of a village. She knew of the boy; a golden apple-dumpling he was, shy and sweet and smelling always of soap and fresh bread and honey, and she smiled to look on him without quite knowing why."

"Did she love him too?" Peeta whispers, and a breathless silence falls as I consider this.

Did I love Peeta when I was a child?

I'm supposed to be talking about his girl, of course, not about me, but I don't know her story. I don't even know her name.

But there's no doubt in my mind as to what will happen once she learns of Peeta's love, so I opt to recount what he's told me or all of Panem, through his interviews, and fill in the blanks with myself, minus any details that might give it away.

"I don't know that even _she_ could have said for sure," I admit at last. "In the Seam love is a matter for family: for spouses and children, not skinny miner's daughters and red-cheeked baker's sons. It would never have occurred to this small girl that the sweet boy, round and golden as one of his beloved cheese buns, might belong to her, whole and entire, the way her strong, handsome father belonged to her mother."

"Couldn't she see it?" Peeta wonders quietly. "The love that poured from him as he gazed on her, day after day?"

There's no doubt in my mind on this one. "I'm afraid not," I tell him. "Perhaps the boy hid it too well, or perhaps the girl couldn't see what she didn't expect – and indeed, wouldn't believe even if she _could_ see it. For example," I add, warming to my topic, "this girl had absolutely no idea that she was beautiful."

 _Is she really,_ I wonder, _or could Peeta love a plain girl?_

Of course he _could,_ but he won't have. That's simply not the way these things work. His beloved will be something out of a fairy tale, all silky braids and flashing eyes.

If only I knew who she was.

"This girl had no idea that she was beautiful," I say again, "radiant as the sun and luminous as the moon in turns, for she was shy and somber and preoccupied with her own lot. She did not feel the admiring glances of her male classmates and certainly not the adoring ones of her boy.

"Indeed, she did not think about her boy much at all," I admit – no, _invent,_ because this isn't supposed to be _my_ story – with a pang around my heart for Peeta's sake. "Her life was a hard one, much like those of the other poor folk living on the fringe of their village, with little room in it for sentiment. But she noticed him," I assure Peeta, "in the way that she noticed the pale, heady blossoms on his family's old apple tree and the soft silver catkins spangling the meadow-willow. He was a fixture of her world; on the periphery of it, steady and golden and kind, like the sun itself.

"She noticed the day his mother hit him," I murmur, _so_ carefully, because he can't know that his beloved was there to witness it. "Surely he had done nothing wrong – nothing that could merit such a blow – but a cruel dark rose bloomed on his cheek nonetheless and swelled up beneath one sweet blue eye. She might have kissed that wound, the girl thought later, and brought him a little comfort, this boy who should mean nothing to her and to whom she must mean less than nothing."

"But she _did_ kiss him," Peeta whispers. "The day he was called away on his terrible journey, his girl came to see him and kissed his cheek, right where that blow had fallen five years before."

My breath stills in grief at these words. I should have thought of that bruise – the very evidence of Peeta's efforts to help me – at the Justice Building when I kissed him on the cheek, so impulsively, as a final desperate gesture of thanks for the act that earned him that awful blow. His sweetheart had done as much, despite not having been present for his injury, let alone the cause of it, and had given him some long-needed comfort along with her tender kiss.

I wonder how there could have been two of us in the Justice Building that day: two horribly out-of-place Seam girls dressed in their mother's shabby best, kissing Peeta Mellark goodbye.

"When the boy was called away – oh, how to say what was in that girl's heart," I pretend to recount, pushing through the regret to continue the story for my boy. "She was nothing to him, so far as she knew, yet he had somehow become precious to her in ways she couldn't begin to comprehend.

"She cried when they took him away," I whisper. "She went somewhere no one could find her and her heart just broke apart with grief."

A long, ragged sigh skitters across my chest. "She did?" Peeta breathes, almost in wonder.

"She cried more than she had ever cried in her life," I confess. "She cried when they took him away and she cried at every terrible thing that befell him on his journey. She pressed a blanket to her mouth to muffle her scream when the wol…w-when the creature savaged him," I rasp. "It haunts her to this day, to have witnessed her sweetheart's pain and been powerless to stop it."

His breath catches sharply and I feel it deep in my breast. "What did you say?" he whispers.

"That it haunts her to this day," I say again, puzzled why such a sweet confession – _invention, Katniss!_ – should be so shocking. "That she could do nothing to stop that horrible attack or even help to tend him after."

He lifts his head a little, just enough to meet my eyes, and his own are red-rimmed but very wide. "You said…" he whispers. "You called him 'her sweetheart.' "

I force my features to stay calm, though I can't prevent a gulp of terror as I mentally flail about for an explanation beneath the direct gaze of those beloved eyes. How could I have let the words slip out? How could I not have caught myself?

 _Because I didn't_ need _to catch myself,_ I recall all at once. _Because I'm not telling him about_ me, _I'm telling him about his girl._ If I fell in love with him without realizing it, surely anyone could.

And then I remember the scrap of red cotton still, always, tied at his wrist: the red plaid of his beloved's childhood dress and his own dreams of their joyful marriage. "She didn't realize it then," I tell him, "nor indeed, for a long time after, but sweetheart he had become, whole and entire. Perhaps her heart knew it before her head and led her to give him the bit of red cloth, for surely she would never have been so bold as to openly present him with a sweetheart's token, let alone at such a time."

Peeta tips his head a little from side to side, processing this. "That makes sense," he says at last, but he continues to gaze at me for a long time, his eyes soft and wistful, before letting his head sink back to my chest. This time, however, he scoots up to burrow his damp face into the curve of my neck, like a drowsy but determined new pup. "Tell me more about this girl," he instructs, sounding strangely content and even a little sleepy. "Tell me about how she loved her boy."

For some reason this makes me chuckle and I don't hesitate in my reply. "This boy was a little greedy for his sweetheart's affection," I tease, "but he had a right to be, I suppose, having loved her for so long. And his girl was shy," I remind him, deliberately forcing myself to envision another, faceless Seam girl who must love Peeta Mellark with all her heart, "but _oh_ , how she loved him. When he returned from his terrible journey, weak and wounded but still so beautiful and wondrously, blessedly _alive_ , how she ached to bound to him and catch him up in her arms, to hug him breathless in her joy and relief and shower him with kisses!

"But of course, she could do no such thing," I remind him – remind both of us, really. "For he had become so wealthy through his trials, like a miller's son in an old tale, that this poor girl dared not even meet his eyes, let alone think about touching him."

"But she did anyway," Peeta insists, much like a rapt child listening to just such an old tale, and I smile.

"She thought – indeed, dreamt – of that and more," I agree. "She imagined their home and their babes and – a-and the begetting of them," I finish in a rush, because even though it's a girl who might as well be imaginary – not me – that I'm talking about, or supposed to be, love-making is a mortifying topic, especially when you're talking to the person you want to engage in it with.

My face burns like a coal but Peeta gives a soft grunt against my throat and nestles himself even snugger against me. "More," he whuffles. "Tell me about the babies and where they would come from."

In spite of myself and the grief this request should cause, I laugh aloud, because he sounds like a child wheedling for a continuation of his bedtime story, only the subject matter is rather more grown-up in nature. "Well, I suppose they would share a bed, as mothers and fathers are wont to do," I tell him with teasing patience. "They would undress and lie down together, so closely that their bodies would…w-would fill each other's empty places," I say, stammering only a little. "And the emptiest place of all – the secret hollow deep inside the girl's belly – he would seed like a garden with…w-with his love," I forge on, fiery-cheeked and wholly out of my depth. "And from it the most beautiful blossoms would spring: blue-eyed sparrow-girls with skinny black braids and chubby dumpling-boys with golden curls and silver eyes."

My womb aches again, empty and plaintive and almost _hungry_ for this future I'm painting for Peeta, and he sighs in echo of its silent pang. "So beautiful," he murmurs sleepily against my throat. "Babies…such _beautiful_ babies… Lying with…m' sweetheart and planting babies inside her…"

I can't take it anymore.

I hook my right knee under his and give a firm tug. Peeta's body is heavy but pliant in this drowsy state and he rolls a little up onto me, so his right leg – the precious, wounded one – falls between mine and his belly presses firmly into my right hipbone. It feels wonderful but insufficient, so I work my right leg up under his left and heft it inward as well, so both of his legs lie between mine.

The space between my hipbones gives a silent croon of pleasure, from my navel all the way down between my thighs, but it's still not quite enough, and I hitch my pelvis against Peeta's belly, as though I could simply scoop up this glorious mass of boy with that tiny cradle of bone and heft him just a little higher on my body.

He lifts his head with a strange garbled sound, halfway between a gasp and a groan. "Katniss, a-are you sure this is okay?" he croaks, his eyes wide and very awake. "I-I'm awfully heavy –"

"You're perfect," I assure him, because I've never felt anything half so wonderful as his warm weight over me, all boy-musk and pulses and quick soft breaths. It should crush me – or the breath from my lungs at the very least – having so much Peeta Mellark on top of me, but instead I want _more_ – all of it.

All of _him_.

I slip my hands into his back pockets, evoking a sharp gasp – unmistakable this time – and even wider eyes, and give an impatient tug at the stubborn bulk of his backside. "Scoot _up_ ," I grumble, because I'd have a better chance shifting a boulder. "Tuck into me."

He looses a ragged, shallow breath and gazes down at me for a long moment with eyes at once troubled and hungry and sad beyond measure. "You feel so _good_ ," I whisper, suddenly sheepish, and ease my hands out of his pockets with a shamed wince. "I-I'm sorry if I –"

I have no idea how to finish that sentence – _If I made you uncomfortable? If I took advantage in some way?_ – but thankfully I never have to. Peeta dips his head to brush his nose against my cheek and with a minute surge from that powerful torso everything shifts an inch or two and he's _there_ , right where I want him and covering me like a blanket, and this time the croon that escapes me is audible, half a mewl and half a moan. His face presses into the pillow above my shoulder with a deep lowing groan that I'd rather fell on my neck, but it's a small price to pay to feel his groin nestled up against mine. The strange lump is harder than I remember from that blissful half-second in the snow; more rigid against me, somehow, but it feels even _better_ with the weight of his body behind it, butting heavily against the juncture of my thighs.

I can't help wondering how it would feel if I wasn't wearing this nightgown; if I was in trousers or leggings or underwear – _or nothing at all_ – and could curl my legs around his hips, pressing back against that exquisite hardness, and I bite back a cry at such an unworthy thought. Peeta's selflessly given me yet _another_ wonderful gift; how dare I take it greedily and demand more? He can't imagine how this feels or why I could possibly want it and yet he gave it to me anyway, despite his clear reservations.

I know I'll never get this again – can't ever, _ever_ ask for it again – and so I resolve to make the most of it for both of us. It can't feel much better to lie on your private parts, pressing them against a bony surface of someone else's body, than to have that someone sitting squarely on top of them, so I bring my hands to Peeta's back, thinking a hug or a little caress might help counter the discomfort. Only my hands aren't content to be on top of fabric anymore, not after that wondrous accident earlier, and they slip beneath the hem of his shirt without hesitation, skittering about like ecstatic mousekins at the first touch of soft warm skin beneath.

Peeta moans against my ear and sinks over me, warm and heavy and limp with bliss.

I hadn't realized, being on top of him for all that time this morning, just how wonderful it would feel to have him on top of me. How much freedom it would give me to touch, or how alluring the back side of his body could be. There's so much of it that I can't think where to start: his broad shoulder blades, the long groove of his spine, his downy nape…? Do I steal a hand – or both hands – away to bury in his crown of buoyant curls?

_Or could I simply take hold of the hem and drag it up over his head, to be engulfed in musky warm bulk and bare skin?_

I jerk my hands out from beneath his shirt with a terrified squeak because it's back: that awful feeling from when I first marched Peeta up to this lover's nest. Everything I've done so far has been innocent, if a little strange, but trying to pull his shirt off would be an obvious demand for something that will never, _can_ never be mine, and the fact that I even thought to attempt such a thing in the midst of this exquisite interlude, however innocently, is so horrifying that I feel sick.

Peeta must feel it too, or something equally awful, because he scrambles off me so quickly that he almost falls off the sofa, his sleep-clumsied limbs tangling in bearskin and fox fur. He frantically rights the covers over me and clambers down to crouch beside the sofa with feverishly flushed cheeks and the most miserable expression I've ever seen on his sweet face.

This is it, of course. He has to send me away now, for groping under his shirt and making him lie so intimately over me. Why couldn't I just hold him like I said and leave well enough alone?

"I'm so sorry," he blurts, his breath short and ragged as though he's just run the length of the Seam. "I shouldn't have…have… _any_ of that."

"But…you didn't do anything," I counter, too perplexed by his apology to temper my reply. "It was me, all of it. I can't seem to stop doing bad things today."

The misery fades from his expression, replaced by confusion and something like sadness. "Katniss, nothing you've done today – or _ever_ , that I can recall," he says, "could possibly be construed as 'bad.'"

I bite my lips together because him being nice – playing stupid, really – about it only makes me feel worse. "I keep doing these _things_ , Peeta," I whisper helplessly. "Things I don't intend to do or even really understand –"

"And that makes them bad?" he wonders softly.

I cock my head like a bird's, frowning down at him. What makes these things so terrible is that they're lover's gestures, another girl's right and unwanted by Peeta…or _are_ they?

He's accepted all my kisses – even the ones on the mouth – in the contexts of playfulness and comfort and has yet to shrink from my touch; could it be that none of this feels loverlike to him? He's an affectionate boy to begin with, and he's been isolated in this fairytale house in the woods for so long that he feeds and befriends everything in sight. Could it be that this gentle, lonely boy drinks up my touch with the same bliss as I gobble up his? That he felt even half as much pleasure at my hands on his back as it felt to have his bare skin beneath my fingers?

I sit up a little, eyeing him like a nearly-tamed fox: wary and tenuously hopeful. " _Aren't_ they bad?" I croak.

His sadness vanishes, snuffed like a candle flame, and a whisper of a smile tugs at his sweet mouth. "Only if…if _you_ don't like it," he says quietly. "Every touch from you feels like a blessing, but I would never want you to feel obligated or uncomfortable."

I sit up fully, gazing at him in disbelief, and reach for his left hand where it lies against the bearskin. " _Blessing?_ " I echo, carefully curling my fingers around his, and his smile glows into fullness, spreading across his face like a sunrise as he turns his hand beneath mine.

"Blessing," he confirms, stroking the back of my hand with his thumb, "of the most wondrous variety. The sort given by good fairies at a christening, without merit or recompense of any sort."

"I-I wouldn't say without recompense," I fumble out, _or for that matter, without merit,_ I add silently, because if anyone is deserving of comforting touch it's Peeta Mellark, and receiving his touch in return is a tenfold – no, _thousandfold_ – reward. It's like giving someone a pebble and receiving a palace in return.

This time it's Peeta who's confused, tilting his head in puzzlement at my words, and I want so badly to kiss him that I just do it, leaning forward to take his curly head in both hands and planting my lips squarely against the crown. "Touching you – and being touched by you in turn – feels like _home_ ," I murmur against his scalp. "I could never hope to earn such a comfort, let alone dream of paying it back."

He leans back just enough to meet my eyes, so slight a movement that it doesn't even shift my hands from their gentle anchors on the sides of his head. "I thought we were past earning and paying back," he says softly, but he doesn't sound upset or troubled in the least. He sounds curious, tender…hopeful, even, but in a deep, almost _hungry_ sort of way.

"I sincerely hope we are," I whisper, because there's no way I could ever even _begin_ to rectify the debt between us.

"Then could you please hold me a little longer?" he whispers back. "Because it feels so good to be in your arms that it _hurts_ to be like this, so close and so far apart all at once."

" _Does_ it?" I rasp, because it's excruciating on my end. It hurts more than I would ever have dreamt the absence of something could. My body aches everywhere, as though I'm being pulled constantly and inexorably by a strange sort of gravity, only that force is pulling me toward Peeta, not the earth, and every moment that I hold myself back from him is like trying to stop yourself from crashing into the earth in a freefall from a tall tree. I feel empty and cold and almost incomplete, as if anytime I'm not physically in contact with him, I'm missing pieces; crucial pieces of my heart and lungs and even that profound, elusive thing my father called a soul, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be whole again. Touch, however tender and affectionate, is fleeting, even shallow in its comfort. I feel like I need Peeta _inside_ me – his warmth and musk and gold flooding that heavy, pulsing hollow at the root of my belly that aches worst of all – to ever truly quench that hunger; that desperation for wholeness, and the impossibility of that is heartbreaking, even terrifying.

"If-If you don't want to –" he wavers, but there was never any shadow of hesitation in my body or my mind. I kick back the furs and tug him up beside me, immediately climbing into his lap and winding myself around him like a particularly affectionate snake; arms snug around his neck and legs knotted about his waist, and squeeze him so hard that he whimpers.

_Mine mine mine mine mine._

"Katniss," he rasps, slipping his arms about my waist in turn. "C-Can you –?"

" _Yes,_ " I sigh into a faceful of downy curls, sinking down onto him and rocking him up against me all at once. " _Anything._ Just name it."

He shakes his head against my throat. "Never mind," he says, "I…it-it's stupid –"

"Tell me," I murmur, gently prodding his head with my chin like an insistent snout, and I feel him concede.

"Can you…c-can you put your hands on my back again?" he whispers. "I-If you want to, I mean. It felt...nice."

My breath skitters out in elated disbelief. I want to lean back a little, to find Peeta's eyes and confirm what I think he just asked, but we're so entwined that it would be like hacking a honeysuckle to pieces just to peer at the oak beneath, and just as painful to both parties.

So instead I curl a handful of shirt at his nape, gently tugging upward, and bring my other hand to the small expanse of bared skin above his waistband. Peeta moans at the touch; a deep hollow sound, at once sated and plaintive, and that's all the confirmation I need to bury both hands beneath his shirt, palms soaring greedily over the powerful planes of his back.

"So good," he groans, his head sagging heavily against me. "Feels _so_ good, Katniss."

"I'd better keep up with my tanning, then," I jest weakly. Between warm, downy skin beneath my hands and my legs wrapped around Peeta's waist, my nightgown bunched up around my thighs with barely a fold of flannel between the pulsing cleft of my groin and the enticing bulge of his, I feel tight and breathless and on the verge of a strange and glorious shatter. "Callused huntress fingers won't feel half so nice," I croak.

"Agreed," Peeta murmurs, startling me in the midst of my euphoric haze. "They'll feel _twice_ as good."

I give a little yip of dismay because this isn't the time or the way to tease me and force myself not to whip my hands out from exactly where they want to be, like I would under any other circumstances. "Don't make fun of me, Peeta," I say, stilling my swirling fingertips against his skin, and butt my jaw against his crown for emphasis. "Please don't."

"I'm not," he says – no, _croons_ , the words hot and hushed against my throat. "Oh Katniss, I would never. Didn't I tell you? Ganders are especially fond of dusky little vixen-toes, and lonely ganders fondest of all."

"I thought you were teasing then too," I grumble, but with no fire whatsoever. "Or that you wanted to nibble my toes for a joke."

Peeta chuckles softly, a deep husky sound that makes something curl in my belly. "I'll happily nibble your toes – both fore and hind ones – for any reason, or none at all," he informs me. "I would never joke about something so important."

Of course, this only serves to prove that he _is_ kidding, about all of it, and yet somehow, impossibly, I don't mind. I rock back a little and nuzzle at his curly head till we're aligned, brows to nose tips, and sigh across his lips. "Silly gander," I tell him, combing my fingertips gently over his ribs. "My fat, foolish, golden goose: this is no good; no good at all."

"What's no good?" he wonders, tilting his head delicately to pip the very tip of his nose against mine, and the drowsy contentment in his voice melts my resolve like sunlight on a honey-pot. "Tell me what you want and you'll have it, vixen mine."

 _I want_ you _!_ cry my heart and my hot, hollow belly all at once. _I want your downy warmth over me, bare and musky and pressing into me with gentle eagerness, and your babes –_ oh, _how I want your babes, be they furred or feathered, hooved or human-kind._

_I want you all, and all of you._

"I-I mean," I fumble out, "this business of cuddling is wondrous fine, but we'll never get anything done if…i-if we keep carrying on in such a fashion."

He tips his head back to meet my eyes, his own heavy-lidded with sleepiness and sheer bliss, and smiles slowly. "And what else is there," he wonders, "my stubborn little songbird, that so presses on our time at this moment? We have enough food to outlast a month-long blizzard without ever stinting on portions, and I can make fresh bread and cakes at the drop of a hat. What am I forgetting?"

I press a small, measured kiss to the tip of his nose. "Your birthday, gosling mine," I reply simply. "And presents, the making of which may require the full use of dusky vixen paws."

At these words he whirls us about so quickly that my back is against the sofa almost before I've blinked. I'm curled like a kit between his radiant warm bulk and the back of the sofa, with my cheek on one sturdy shoulder and a mound of silky furs tugged hastily over us both. "Time for sleep," grunts the soft mouth against my forehead, with no little amusement and so much affection it blinds me, even with my eyes closed tight. "No more leisurely cuddling, you lazy thing, just a quick fortifying nap. I want a whole heap of birthday presents made by crafty vixen paws," he murmurs gleefully.

I chuckle against his chest, my heart so swollen with love that the happy jostle of laughter almost hurts. "Yes, greedy gander," I reply meekly. "Though it might help if I knew how much time I have to work on said presents."

Peeta makes a strange little sound; a sort of whine, almost, and I lift my head to find him regarding me with lips pressed firmly together, as though he'd rather admit anything in the world than the answer to my question. "If your birthday is in June, I will eat you here and now," I inform him. "You may be the most precious thing in the world to me, but no present I can dream up would require six months of abstaining from cuddling."

He grins crookedly. "It's March, actually," he says. "March 19th."

I exhale in a little huff, somewhere between disappointment and despair. My sweetheart's birthday is a yawning _two and a half months_ away. Closer to two than three, maybe, but June was a joke: March 19th feels like an eternity from now. I'm not sure I can hold onto the deerskin that long, but that's not the worst of it.

Before I can stop myself, my eyes drift to the jar on the low table: the jar full of red ribbon scraps that Peeta can't possibly have spotted yet. I promised no more kisses till his birthday; how in the world will I suffer through two and a half _months_?

"Is that a problem?" he wonders softly. "We can celebrate my birthday whenever you want, Katniss – or skip it entirely, really; it's not a big –"

I dip my head to brush a swift feather-kiss across his mouth and quickly burrow against him once more, my burning face buried in his shirt.

"Ah," he says, and one big gentle hand cups the back of my head. "I'd call you a thief, scamp," he murmurs tenderly, caressing my scalp with his fingertips, "except you are so _fiercely_ determined to give, not to take."

 _If you only knew,_ I think miserably. _How greedy I am to touch and kiss any part of you, and your lips most of all. How happy I am to gobble up your kisses like stolen toffee buttons._

I _am_ a thief, and the very worst kind: stealing kisses and embraces that belong to another girl – and a Seam girl at that, as like me as can be imagined. How would I feel to learn another Seam girl had been kissing and cuddling Peeta while he waited for my heart?

I press my face hard against his chest with a sharp, hopeless whimper.

"Shh, little one," Peeta soothes, curling his body to form a nest for mine and fitting snugly around me, guiding my face to rest against his throat and scooping his knees beneath my backside.

For the first time it occurs to me how vulnerable he's made himself, this gentle boy: persistently presenting his bare throat to a fierce and deadly vixen.

 _I might nip you,_ I warned him earlier, as he held me so tightly in the snow.

 _I love it when you're fierce,_ he replied, _and love it even more when you nip me._

I wonder how my father would feel about this method of taming, and if the prince in the old tale ever tried this approach with his fox.

"You're _safe,_ Katniss," Peeta murmurs, a sweet hum against my face as he gathers me to him. " _Home._ Warm and protected and…and cared for, treasured, _cherished,_ so very much. Tell me what's making you sad and I'll fix it," he says huskily. "I promise. I can't bear it when you're sad."

I shake my head against him because the last thing I can do right now – no, _ever_ – is tell him why it hurts to be in his arms, let alone dare to hope he could "fix" the problem. "I _can't_ ," I whisper. "It's not something you can fix anyway."

"I can try," he reminds me gently, and I have to swallow a whimper as his fingers inch up to caress my nape. I want to lean back into the touch and bring those fingers to my lips all at once, and I don't dare do either one.

"I hope someday you _can_ tell me, little sweetheart," he says, stroking his chin against my head and tucking me a little closer against his throat, as though he heard the cry I didn't utter. "That you'll trust me with the deepest, most painful burden of your heart. I'd do anything to take it from you," he whispers. "Anything to stop you from hurting."

I know he's telling the truth and that makes it even worse. This sweet boy practically lives to ensure my comfort and it's probably driving him out of his mind that there's a hurt he can't heal – can't even reach – but it wouldn't help anything if I told him. He's not going to love me just because I wish that he could, but he'd probably try to find some way to make me happy; give me all the trappings of a sweetheart and none of the love, perhaps, and break his own heart in the process.

So I give the only I answer I can. "I hope someday I can tell you too," I whisper back, and sink into his solid warmth with a bittersweet sigh.

Peeta echoes it, and almost at once his breath slows to a content and steady pattern of long and deep. He's so tired and so overdue for his nap that I'm a little surprised it took him this long to drop off, but just when I'm certain he's out he murmurs, softly but clear: "Thank you, Katniss…for everything. For your songs and for the cuddle-nest, for the wonderful breakfast and…a-and the kisses and…the story about my sweetheart. Thank you for…for…" His voice breaks but in a long, determined yawn, not hesitation. "For hope," he says simply; sleepily, and with a little croon of breath he drifts off beneath me, his powerful body limp and heavy and blissful in slumber.

I smile and tuck a shy kiss into the hollow of his throat. "Thank _you_ , sweet boy," I whisper, and settle down to dream against his shoulder.

* * *

_I'm in a place at once familiar and impossible: the Seam house I grew up in, yet as I've never seen it before. There is a merry, sooty coal fire on the hearth, blazing cheerfully beneath a beribboned garland of pine, and all about are the comforting scents of snow-dampened wool and leather and furs, of rabbit stew, deer-blood sausage, and hot acorn bread spread with goat cheese and honey._

_It feels like home, but not my own._

_I'm sitting in Granny Ashpet's rocking chair, wearing a long dress of soft red plaid cotton. My lap is draped with a familiar ashen-silver fur with glints of copper; my fox fur –_ my true skin, _I think idly – and I curl forward to hug the firm, proud swell of my belly with both arms._

_The babies are elated._

_I don't know how I know this, but I do. They're so full of joy that it almost hurts. They're coming soon, so soon now, and I'm impatient to cradle and cuddle them, to guide a hungry little mouth to each breast and kiss their sweet tiny faces as they suckle._

_My grandmother is seated on a crate with my bare feet in her lap, massaging them with her strong tanned hands. She's older than she ever lived to be: her hair, pinned in a slapdash sort of bun at her nape, is almost entirely silver, and her striking face is lined by decades of happiness and hours spent hunting beneath the sun, and yet she's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. "It's not often we get a visit from the moon herself," she remarks, as though we've been at this conversation for some time, not just beginning it. "And how are the fawnlings today?" she wonders, looking up with a dazzling smile._

" _Fawns?" says a man's voice, brimming with laughter, and Grandpa Asa comes up beside her, a jaunty cap tugged low over his wild shock of gray hair and the beginnings of a stick dolly in one hand. "'Tis a peeping fat goose, acushla," he corrects her with a wink, "silver as dandelion-down, and a merry golden kit. Goslit and kitling," he informs us, gently laying his free hand on my belly. "None other could it be."_

 _He is neither handsome nor ugly, this man I have never quite been able to picture in my mind, with his hooked nose and soft gray eyes. He has a face that instantly feels like_ home, _like sooty fires and musty quilts and ancient lullabies, and I no longer wonder why Granny Ashpet chose a slight, plain dreamer of a boy over every other in the district._

_My grandfather is gentleness incarnate, and I see the adoration in Granny Ashpet's face as she looks up at him – a feat not often achieved between the two of them, owing to my grandmother's superior height. "Think you so, lover?" she wonders. "This doe wants fawns, make no mistake, and her golden boy is crowned with antlers."_

" _That signifies little enough," says Aunt Laurel in passing and I look up with a grin, half expecting her to be wearing her own antlers, but she looks so wonderfully ordinary and Seam-born with her muddy boots and flannel coat and silver-threaded braids that I want to clamber up from this chair and hug her about the waist. She's about an inch taller than her aging father, making it painfully clear just how diminutive he truly is, and takes full advantage of this by pressing a sound smack of a kiss atop his capped head._

" _Have you never seen her mate, Papa?" she wonders. "The sun himself, he is. She carries the stars in her womb, Morning and Evening both. Jackie!" she calls. "Tell them. You know better than anyone."_

_My father emerges from the next room, wreathed in smiles and handsomer than ever, his faintly silvered black hair tied back at the temples. "You silly lot!" he laughs fondly. "You're all more hair than wit. Catkin has loved the white bear since long before she understood it. She wept like a bereaved lover not to have him in her arms when she was just five years old, make no mistake about it. I told her he would come to her in time; all she need do was wait, and so he did._

" _Catkins and cubs," he declares, coming over to press a kiss to the kerchief tied about my braids like a little red cap. "Snowy white bear-cubs and downy silver catkins," he says, with a caress of my cheek. "My daughter would have nothing less."_

" _Beloved!" cries a muffled voice that makes my heart leap and the babes in my belly surge about wildly. "What madness is your kin conspiring with all this talk of animals?"_

_My husband has come._

_Warm golden light seeps around the edges of the front door, brighter and more beautiful than any lantern or torch. The light of the sun itself, powerful enough to hatch black and gold nestlings from pebbles._

" _Open the door to me, Katniss," he implores, "for I am heavy-burdened with gifts and mean to kiss you at once, and thoroughly, upon my entering."_

_I laugh delightedly and shake off my kin, wriggling out of the chair with a great heave for my heavy belly. I'm half-delirious with eagerness and the babies are twice so, tremoring inside me with anticipation for their father. The promised kiss, of course, is only the beginning. My beloved intends to carry me to the nearest bed of musty quilts and there love me from head to foot, lavishing an immeasurable span of time on my belly, where our children lie, and lower down; the secret place, where he entered to plant them inside me. His touches there are the sweetest of all, and I blush deeply at the thought of engaging in such delicious intimacies while my family waits in the room adjacent, but a little embarrassment is not enough to give me pause, not when I am so near to joining with my beloved once more._

" _Whatever form he appears in is the form the babes will take!" Granny Ashpet whispers urgently, somewhere behind me._

" _I'll take that bet," her daughter whispers back._

" _Don't bother with your trappings," Granny Ashpet calls to my unseen beloved. "Your bride is anxious to see your face."_

" _As am I for hers," he calls in reply, then beseeches me with blatant adoration: "Moon-willow, vixen, sweet songbird who made her nest in my heart: please let me in! I am dying for want of your lips on mine and your precious body in my arms."_

_I take hold of the latch, the metal gently warmed by his presence on the other side, and lift it with eager, trembling fingers. Whatever waits for me beyond this door – a magnificent golden buck, a great white bear, a silly yellow gander, or a young man incandescent with the sun's own light – I love him all, and all of him, and I ache to see our babes and hold them in my arms._

_But not before I hold him, and love him with all my might._

_I fling the door wide open to a glorious blaze of hot, honey-golden light –_

* * *

– and I wake with an audible pang, my belly heavy and hollow and my heart a cold knot of grief.

No mysterious, unseen beloved. No babes. My father and his family are all dead, not surrounding me in gentle affection and making playful guesses as to the nature of my unborn twins.

And yet I'm not alone.

I'm lying beside – half on top of – a soundly sleeping Peeta, his powerful body cocooned around mine, snugging me solidly between his glorious warm bulk and the cushioned back of the sofa.

I smile.

" _Welcome, beloved,_ " I whisper soundlessly, tracing his heart with a fingertip, and shiver at the daring words cascading from my tongue, still caught up in the bittersweet, beautiful dream. " _My door is always open to you, and my arms._ "

He gives a soft grunt in response, making me start, and one strong hand slides over my body to cover my hand on his chest. "Sweetheart," he drowses. "M' little sweetheart…"

"Not quite," I tell him sadly, almost silently. "You've caught a little black bird – tamed her, in fact – but she's not the right one."

" _Only_ one," he slurs insistently.

"I know, sweet boy," I assure him with a gentle kiss to his forehead. "There's only one bird for you, and always has been. We'll get her for you, even if I have to lay the snare myself."

"She lays the snares," he sighs. "Lays snares for me…shimmering nets of moonlight…in her eyes."

"And you want the moon," I reply, intending to comfort him with the reminder, but I can barely choke out the words.

"I watch her," he whispers. "Look for her every day in the sky, but she never comes near the sun. She's barely close enough to feel his light…never close enough to hold."

"She will be," I promise, even as it breaks my heart to identify his sweetheart – some other birdlike Seam girl – as the huntress-moon. "Perhaps she'll surprise you and catch hold of you herself," I suggest. "She _is_ a huntress, after all."

" _My_ huntress," he grunts, squeezing my hand, and I let a smile sneak onto my lips. However wildly he dreams of his sweetheart, he still knows who I am, even in slumber.

"Yours, whole and entire," I agree, dipping my head to kiss his hand where it covers mine on his chest. "Always and entirely yours."

He gives a pleasured little " _Mmm…_ " in reply and sinks into slow deep breaths once more. It's the hardest thing I'll ever have to do in my life, I'm sure of it, but I carefully extricate myself from his embrace and slip off the sofa – not because I _want_ to, not in any measure, but because I've been commissioned to make birthday presents, and if I spend much more time in proximity to my sweetheart I'm fairly certain I'll burst, from my heart or my belly or perhaps both at once. The secret place between my legs feels a little damp, almost slippery, though the heady, urgent ache from earlier has faded to a warm, pleasant sort of heaviness that feels full and empty all at once.

I pull the furs up over Peeta while firmly, blushingly resisting the urge to glance at his groin, to find the lump in his trousers that fits my aching hollow like a key and makes stars dance behind my eyes. I understand that less than anything so far, and the further I can get away from that strange, troubling, thoroughly senseless ecstasy, the better.

I slip upstairs and dress in the sweater and trousers Lavinia must have laid out last night, taking a quick peek inside my underwear as I do. There's a small patch of colorless dampness on the crotch, where the fabric rests against the most intimate part of me, and the sight of it jars a terrifying rush in my head; a dizzying, ringing sort of pulsation. I don't know what this means and I'm afraid to guess at it – to even _think_ about it. I know I'm not sick as such; there's nothing physically wrong with me – there couldn't be, not under Peeta and Lavinia's devoted care – but this is something I've neither seen nor heard of before and therefore frightening, like the first time I got my menses, about six months after Peeta gave me burned bread and I gorged myself on dandelions and sunshine and hope.

I gorged myself on the full bounty of the woods that autumn in anticipation of another desperate winter, thinking perhaps I could stuff myself till the food was all gone and then sleep away some of the hollow nights like a hibernating bear, and I was up to my eyes in a bowl of honey-and-acorn mush with a cold boiled egg, mashed with wild onions and chives and buttery dandelion petals, when I felt the first pang in my belly – not my stomach; somewhere lower, deeper, more primal – and in the shack by the lake when I discovered the first blot of blood on my underthings. I was terrified that I'd ruptured my insides with so much food or grown a bleeding ulcer, or maybe I'd finally eaten a bad mushroom or berry and was slowly hemorrhaging to death, and my mother was no help then, even if I could have swallowed my resentment for the bad months after Dad died and gone to her. I was desperate to keep the news from Prim, certain I was dying and my tiny, delicate sister would surely be next, and finally, trembling and in tears from both the terror and the nauseating pain, I caught Greasy Sae alone at her stewpot and blubbered out my worst fears.

After her initial guffaws of laughter the old Seamwife pulled together a pouch of clean rags, threw in a hearty chunk of the wild ginger I'd just traded her to steep for an earthy but effective pain tea, and gave me a gruff hug for good measure. I found our own rag-bag when I got home – or rather, finally understood what and _why_ it was – and warmed a big lake stone to lay on my belly when I knew Prim wouldn't see. I still didn't want her to know what was happening to me, certain she would despair at this strange, gory rite of passage that her always-strong sister was suffering through. She figured it out eventually, of course, and in her wise and quiet way, did little things to try and make it easier for me, like steeping great pots of willow bark tea for me and trying to make that hideous cat of hers lie in my lap as a source of radiant heat that we wouldn't have to pay for.

I haven't had my menses since the first snowfall in October. I lost too much weight this winter; it's a common thing when you live in the Seam, where food is constantly, perilously scarce, and I wonder if this bizarre new bodily response – the pleasant, heavy ache between my legs, the damp spot in my underwear – is related somehow. Maybe it's an indication that I'm getting my cycle back – _the moon cycle_ , the Seamwives call it, or sometimes _the blood tide_ , but in a mystical sort of fashion, not a violent or grotesque one – and the thought brings an inexplicable smile to my lips. Having a menstrual flow again would mean I'm truly healthy – _whole,_ even – but it feels like more than that. Like something momentous, even _wonderful,_ is coming, not merely one week out of four characterized by acute abdominal pain, daylong bouts of irritability, and a heap of bloodstained linens to bleach and scrub.

I shrug off these troubling thoughts and cross to the bathroom to splash my face at the sink. The pulsing rush in my brain has eased with no flush in my cheeks to show for it, but I still feel hot and uncomfortable and even a little shaken. Going outside and working on the deerskin will do wonders for that, though, and provide distraction aplenty.

I look in on Peeta to ensure he's still sleeping comfortably in his – _our_ – nest of pillows and furs then return to the kitchen, where I make quick work of the dishes and pull together the "scraps" I set aside earlier: eggshells, breadcrumbs, a tiny handful of cranberries, and one perfect drop biscuit that I designated for Peeta's birds from the very beginning and now crumble for ease of sharing among many tiny beaks. As an afterthought I scrape up the little pockets of rich bacon fat still clinging to the skillet and make thumbnail-sized "bird cake" suet nuggets with the breadcrumbs and a few nubbins of biscuit. Peeta's birds will be delighted by the unexpected feast, and it makes me deliriously happy to be able to do something wonderful for someone he loves.

With this thought in mind, I duck into the pantry and fill my pockets with sugar cubes.

I emerge from the house in my cardinal cap and go straight to the garden to scatter the meal for Peeta's birds – no, _our_ birds. A few sparrows, feathers fluffed up against the chill, linger on dormant raspberry canes as I come near and greet me with loud, reproachful cheeps, making me laugh. "I'm sorry, little darlings," I tell them as I toss a handful of suet nuggets in their direction. "Peeta was up plenty early to feed you, but I'm afraid he got distracted."

 _By_ me _,_ I think in a flood of foolish happiness. _I pounced on him and kissed him senseless and cooked him breakfast. I made him so happy that he forgot to feed the birds –_ who, judging by their sleek plumpness and bright, healthy eyes, would be none the worse for a missed meal or two, let alone a slightly delayed breakfast.

All at once I have to tell someone; _anyone_ ; have to share this wild, shimmering fountain of joy that has me breathless and bursting at the seams. I'm beginning to understand why girls feel the need to discuss every detail of their crushes with their sisters and school friends, but of course I can't tell Prim about any of this. _Could I write to Madge?_ I wonder. Quiet golden Madge is the closest thing I have to a school friend, and she just sent me those beautiful sugar plums, so it wouldn't be completely out of the blue to receive a letter from me in reply.

Then again, Madge immediately assumed that Peeta would leap into bed with me as soon as we got out here – and offered me Capitol pills to prevent a pregnancy – so for a myriad of reasons, it can't be her.

I glance at the stable, thinking of the faithful animal companions in every good fairy tale, hearing all and sharing none, and bound inside: straight for Rye's stall, where his long white face is already looming out, curiosity piqued by my unusually noisy manner of arrival. "Oh, _Rye!_ " I cry, tossing aside the empty bird tray to unlatch the stall door with trembling fingers, and slip inside to fling my arms around the pony's broad shaggy neck and bury my face in his mane.

I don't consider for a moment that I'm hugging a creature large enough to crush me with a simple shift of its weight or batter me to death with its heavy hooves, and sweet placid Rye gives me no reason to; just a deep, understanding sort of whuffle in reply.

"Oh, Rye," I say again, a long sigh into a faceful of coarse pale hair, "I love Peeta. I love him so much; love him with all my might – and we just took a nap together; the two of us, snuggled together on the sofa like mousekins in a nest! I cooked breakfast for him and he loved it, every last bite – and I kissed him out in the snow! I knocked him over and nuzzled him to bits and _I kissed him_ _on the mouth!_ " I squeal. "And he wasn't angry or anything; he just asked what it was for, like in my bird dream, when I rubbed my little head against his heart."

The pony whuffles again – somehow, all the response I require – and dips his head toward my hip pocket, lipping intently at the corduroy.

"All right, you greedy thing," I giggle, nipping out of the stall and latching the door firmly behind me before producing two sugar cubes from the pocket he was pursuing. "I'll trade you sugar cubes for secrets," I tell him in my toughest trader voice, proffering the cubes just out of reach, and wave them about tantalizingly. "One cube for each sympathetic whuffle," I tease. "Take it or leave it."

Rye snorts and tosses his head impatiently – as close to a nod as I'm going to get – and I give him the cubes, and a quick kiss on the nose for good measure. "Done," I declare. "And may I say, lazy lump, you've snagged yourself quite a bargain."

But that isn't quite enough. The fountain of my heart is still bubbling up wildly; a quick hug and a rambled confession barely lessened the sweet pressure in my chest, and so I dart back outside in search of my mourning dove. The garden is already full of merry, greedy birds enjoying their breakfast feast but she won't be in the midst of them.

"Where are you, little one?" I call softly. "Please, I want to tell you something."

There's a familiar chittering wing-whistle, much nearer than I anticipate, and a small, beloved creamy brown bird comes to land about twenty feet away: along the most distant edge of the crumb-swath, sown just for her, safely away from the competitive cacophony of iridescent blackbirds and striking blue jays and fat, ornery sparrows.

I creep forward and crouch in the snow, crumbless, to extend an empty palm in greeting. "I love Peeta Mellark," I tell her in a whisper. "The sweet honey-boy with the golden curls who brings you food every day. _Oh,_ how I love him, little bird."

She gives a suet nugget several investigative pecks with her slender beak – she's a wild dove, after all, not a near-pet like Rye – before briefly but keenly fixing her bright black eyes on me. I wonder if she'll tell every bird in the woods till the trees and dry winter grasses sigh my secret in the slightest breeze, like in the ancient tale of the donkey-eared king.

_Katniss loves Peeta Mellark… The huntress loves the gentle boy… The moon loves the sun…_

Will every wild creature look at me knowingly now? A wry slant of eye as they quiver and breathe their last, impaled by my arrows? _I am not so poor off as you,_ it would say. _My pain is brief and about to end; yours is embedded in your very soul and will endure even after your body expires – will hurt to the very end of time._

No, my dove is as shy as I am and will carry my secret in her heart.

 _Is this,_ I wonder, _why dove's hearts made love potions in the old tales? They held the love of the unrequited one and the beloved consumed it in their drink?_

I wonder idly if making more meals for Peeta might serve the same purpose. Filling him with my love till it seeps from his belly into his bloodstream, then surges like lightning to his lungs and heart and mind –

No, I can't think like that. Peeta is not mine; _never_ mine, and it's unkind, unworthy, and downright wicked of me to wish otherwise, knowing now what I do of his sweetheart. Love means wanting the best for someone, even if that isn't you, and Peeta deserves nothing less than the bride he's longed for since he was five years old.

But that doesn't mean I can't shower him with my love at every turn; can't pour my love into him till he glows with it like a toasting fire.

I think of last night's dream of heartbreaking beauty, of katniss blossoms and bridal doeskins and sharing a rich man's toasting meal with the sun himself. _His very light is his love for you,_ Aunt Laurel said, _and you in your turn are radiant with it_ , but it's the other way around. It's _me_ who's incandescent with love and Peeta who will be made radiant by its light.

The next step in that direction is, of course, completing the deerskin to wrap around my sun-boy like a cape of soft and supple gold, fit for the sun himself, and I return to the stable on eager fox-feet to find Pollux uncovering the sleigh in a positive sulk. Dressed in trousers, a thermal undershirt, and suspenders, he stomps glowering and stocking-footed to retrieve Rye's harness.

He looks up at me for a moment, narrows his eyes in a scowl, and storms back to the sleigh, making cross little noises in his throat.

He's _grumpy_.

I've never seen him like this, and it's absolutely delightful.

"And a fine 'good morning' to you too," I tease, crossing to nonchalantly ruffle Rye's ears as he regards Pollux, a little bemused by this peculiar behavior from his neighbor – from _everyone_ this morning, probably. "What's eating you?"

Pollux produces a scrap of paper from a pocket and shakes it crossly in my direction, still glowering, but I'm too far away to make out the words written there. It's unlikely he'd be waving around a love note, though, and even more unlikely that Lavinia would have given one to him, so it must be instructions of some kind from Peeta.

But Peeta's still asleep in our nest, and he came straight from shoveling snow to breakfast and then on to the sofa with me. When would he have had time – or opportunity – to leave Pollux a note? And he just assured me that we have enough food to outlast a month-long blizzard, so what in the world could he possibly want from town, let alone so urgently that he dragged Pollux out of bed to retrieve it?

"What's that?" I ask, coming over for a closer look at these mysterious orders, but Pollux pulls the paper out of reach with a grumble – which, naturally, makes me even more curious.

"Oh, come on," I wheedle, making a valiant, unsuccessful grab for the note. "What's so secret about milk and eggs? We were bound to run out eventually."

Lavinia laughs nearby and I look up to see her at the foot of the stairs, dressed in leggings and one of Pollux's sweaters, her fiery hair wild about her face and her stunning caramel eyes soft and sleepy. Somehow she looks more beautiful than ever.

Which, I suppose, explains why Pollux was so cross to leave his bed this morning.

"Hello," I greet her, pushing past my embarrassment with vigorous cheerfulness and more teasing. "This one is in quite the mood this morning."

She raises her black brows and comes to take the note from Pollux's unresisting fingers, and the message must be short indeed because she reads it in an instant and flashes me a furtive grin that crinkles her eyes at the corners.

I've never felt so curious or nosy in my life. "What _is_ it?" I ask. "What does he want from town?"

She ducks away with a jubilant laugh, the paper curled securely in one slim hand, and tugs the canvas back over the sleigh, then she presses an impish kiss to Pollux's cheek, gestures demonstratively between the harness and Rye, and skips back upstairs.

Openly perplexed, Pollux retrieves his boots from beside the stable stove but duly leads the pony out of his stall and buckles him into the belled harness. In the midst of this Lavinia returns, thoroughly bundled in her scarf, fine new coat, and boots, with her brilliant hair tucked up inside Pollux's sparrow-cap, and takes my beautiful new skis from a cupboard.

I wonder for a half-second where I'm supposed to be going and then she gestures to Pollux to lead the pony outside, where I look on in surprise and sudden comprehending laughter as ever-practical Lavinia straps her feet into the skis, hooks Rye's harness around her waist, and takes the reins in either hand, in lieu of poles.

Apparently she means to save time and effort by skipping the sleigh and simply skiing to town on Peeta's errand.

She waves Pollux to her and tugs him down for a long, hearty kiss, square on the mouth, then she whistles sharply to Rye and he prances off toward the lake with her in tow, as though this new arrangement is the most normal thing in the world. Or maybe he's so happy to pull a featherlight load that he doesn't particularly care how or why it came about.

I look at Pollux, gazing bereftly after his clever wife, and giggle in spite of myself. I no longer wonder how Lavinia made it from the Capitol to the wilds of District Twelve before being captured; rather, I wonder if she could teach _me_ a thing or two about resourcefulness and resolve to take her into the woods with me at the first opportunity.

"Cheer up," I tell him, coming up to plant a playful peck on one bearded cheek. "She'll come back to you, I'm sure of it – unless, of course, she finds someone more promising in town."

He scowls down at me, albeit with a flicker of genuine fear that his beautiful wife might indeed find a better prospect during a quick run to the grocer's, then in one fell swoop he picks me up and slings me over one burly shoulder like a particularly bothersome burden. By this point laughter is inevitable and I giggle myself breathless as he totes me into the workshop and deposits me with a huff beside the deerskin in its frame, then quickly produces his slate and chalk.

 _You and your mischief stay in_ _here_ _,_ he writes sternly. _I'm going back to bed and I don't want to see anyone but my wife for the rest of the day._

I answer this with a shameless grin. "Fair enough," I say, "but if she finds a better offer in town, I'm waking you at dawn tomorrow morning with a bucket of snow on your head, you wonderful grumpy thing."

He curls an arm around my neck and presses a gruff kiss to the top of my head. _My life was so much easier before you came along, imp,_ he writes, bracing the slate against me. _You two will wear me out with these fool errands of yours._

"I haven't sent you on _any_ errands yet," I remind him, while squealing inwardly at this confirmation that whatever Peeta wants so badly from town is intended, at least in some measure, for me.

And then I remember: I _did_ send Pollux on an errand; a very particular one that ended all wrong.

"Pollux, the venison ribs," I say softly, catching him by a suspender to keep him close. "Why didn't you deliver them to Peeta's sweetheart?"

He raises his brows in surprise. _I brought the parcel to the bakery, just like you said,_ he writes. _How do you know she didn't receive it?_

For some reason this question makes me blush, as though I've been snooping into matters that are none of my business, and I already feel terrible for meddling in Peeta's careful courtship of his sweetheart. "Because I found them in the freezer this morning," I reply, quieter still. "I was looking for a chub of sausage and there they were, large as life."

His lips curl in a strange smile: a gratified, almost victorious one that makes no sense whatsoever. _FAIRIES_ _,_ he writes firmly. _That's how these things happen in your stories, isn't it?_

I shake my head in puzzlement, more confused now than ever. "Sometimes," I concede, dismissing for the moment that fairies don't exist outside of the old tales, and never have. "But why on earth would fairies spirit away a package of venison from a bakery icebox and return it to the giver?"

 _Why indeed,_ he writes cryptically, and gives my braids an affectionate toss before leaving the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to **ghtlovesthg** for prereading/soft-betaing this chapter, and on Christmas Eve to boot!
> 
> "Give Me the Moon," the song Katniss sings in the cuddle-nest, was written by Jessica Radcliffe and appears on her glorious album, _Beautiful Darkness: Celebrating the Winter Solstice._
> 
> Peeta's request for two birthday kisses is very slightly inspired by a heartbreaking moment in Susan Kay's _Phantom_ (a sumptuous retelling of _Phantom of the Opera_ ).


	15. Appetites and Awakenings (Part Two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second half of Ch 14, not a new/actual 15th chapter - AO3 wouldn't let me upload the whole thing as one chapter. :( Apologies for any confusion.

I stare at the stretched deerskin for several long, pensive moments. Pollux wouldn't lie about completing his errand – if he hadn't delivered the parcel he would have told me so, and why – which means someone at the bakery intercepted the ribs and sent them back without his knowledge, tucked among the gifts or maybe with the meat parcel from Rooba. Maybe Peeta's father or one of his brothers expected the girl to reject the present and wanted to save everyone undue embarrassment, or maybe they know about the strange conditions of his courtship.

In any case, I should focus on the myriad blessings that resulted from this bungled errand. I get to share another slab of delicious venison ribs – and several fine cuts of meat besides – with Peeta, and we've all escaped a lot of embarrassment. And it might even reflect well on me for the baker's family to know I sent a New Year's gift for Peeta's sweetheart. After all, I could hardly be in love with the boy myself if I'm sending a goodwill present to the girl he loves.

The girl whose identity I need to root out, here and now.

Today's workload includes stretching the damp skin to thoroughly break the fibers and buffing it soft with Pollux's sandpaper blocks and roughly sawn pieces of bone, though I rule, after seemingly endless internal debate, that I don't need to repeat the braining, which would require a trip to the woods for half a dozen rabbits and a repeat of yesterday's labors. As fine as it would be to touch Peeta with renewed brain-softened hands, I don't need to butcher half a dozen rabbits on top of today's tasks and if I did, I'd want the preservation of _their_ skins to be the top priority for that precious brain tissue. I'll make Peeta something – possibly _many_ somethings – with rabbit-skin for his birthday, but that's a project for another day. Today is reserved for the endless task of stretching and softening a deerskin, and to help pass the time, I've set my mind to solving the riddle that is Peeta's sweetheart.

There's a strange old tale where the unlikely solution to an unthinkable problem is to guess a name. A wicked gnome makes a bargain with a young queen to steal away her firstborn child, and the only way to prevent it – to defeat him wholly – is to guess his name. When she does at last, with a bit of help, the furious creature stomps himself into the ground and tears himself in two for good measure.

Of course, I don't wish any such gory end for Peeta's beloved, but I can't help wondering if I could make her go away by guessing her name.

Being named for a flower is fairly common in Twelve as our principal industry, unlike those of other districts, doesn't exactly lend itself to charming children's names, let alone for girls. Some families, like Peeta's, build a legacy with repeat family names while others, like Granny Ashpet's father and Granny Ashpet in her turn, choose names from favorite old tales, but remote as we are from the rest of Panem, nature itself serves as a favorite, reliable source of names.

Merchants tend to snap up the sumptuous or dainty flower names such as Rose, Lily, and Iris, though it's not unheard of nor even uncommon for a Seam girl to bear such a name. In general, though, Seam parents gravitate toward more common – less pretentious, perhaps – wildflower names like Clover, Honeysuckle, or Daisy. Primrose, my sister's name, strikes a perfect balance between the delicacy of a Merchant garden bloom and the hardiness of a wild Seam weed.

While I stretch the deerskin with deep weighted presses of a long bone, I wrack my brain for all the girls my age who could be named for white flowers. I've never paid much attention to my classmates at all, let alone the female ones, and I berate myself silently and thoroughly for this oversight. There are around 100 kids in my class, among which I recall two Lilys, one Rose, and a Daisy, but all of them are full-blooded blonde, blue-eyed Merchant girls, hardly Peeta's _beautiful little bird, all black and silver and creamy dove-brown._ There's a Seam girl called Clover and another simply named Blossom, which would probably qualify, but the more I think of it, even Anne and Cicely are the names of white flowers – and Alyssum too, for that matter, though my mother typically associated herself with the deep purple variety.

And then it hits me like a tribute's death cannon.

Columbine Wilhearn, named for the woodland flower with its delicate star-shaped blooms and long tails tipped with nectar. She's easily the prettiest girl in the Seam; maybe the prettiest in the entire district, and she's like me only _better_ – impossibly so.

Half-Merchant and half-Seam, her father is the youngest son of the town tailor, who didn't care to have a Seam daughter-in-law living above their fine shop in town but wasn't bothered overmuch by his son setting up his own business in the Seam and taking a healthy portion of their customers with him. To be fair, Columbine's father probably doesn't make all that much more than my Merchant-born mother did in her capacity as Seam apothecary, but his wife is still alive and well and working alongside him, which means extra takings – and of course, that he didn't give up on life for several years and have to rebuild from starvation and hollow cupboards. His rates are cheap and flexible enough that most Seam folk can afford to have a piece of clothing mended or made to fit, but there are also plenty of Merchant folk who continue to patronize his shop because his work is so good – at half the price of his father's.

In other words, the Wilhearns are the closest the Seam has to affluence, which means that Columbine, who would have been stunning even lean and scrawny and covered in coal dust, sports the healthy curves, round cheeks, and thick, shiny hair that are her Merchant heritage. Her skin is fairer than that of most Seam girls – closer to cream than cream-coffee, though still more olive than fair – and her hair, though a decided Seam-black, has a becoming bit of curl when she wears it down.

Naturally, all the boys like her. She's a Seam girl who doesn't look _too_ Seam – probably a bit like Granny Ashpet in her day, minus the striking cougar eyes, of course – so even the proudest Merchant boys turn their heads when she walks by.

Sweet Peeta Mellark, with his love of old tales and fairy maids, would have fallen head over heels at first sight.

The only wrinkle in my theory is that Columbine is a year older than us, but Peeta only said that he saw and fell in love with his girl on the first day of school, not that they were in the same class – and really, there's no one else it could possibly be. Columbine Wilhearn is the only girl in Twelve who could even remotely resemble the silver moon come to earth, and while I can't recall ever hearing her sing, with a face as pretty as hers, every word that leaves her mouth will sound like starlight, especially to a boy in love.

No wonder Peeta's been so reluctant to court his fabled sweetheart. Columbine has her pick of the boys, both Merchant and Seam, and her family is comfortable enough in funds not to desperately need his Victor's winnings, while still Seam enough to feel obliged to repay any gift and pressured to accept if he proposed.

I think of sending Columbine Wilhearn a parcel of raw venison as a New Year's gift and set down my crude bone scraper to cradle my burning cheeks.

I suddenly want Rye here so badly, so I could bury my face in his broad neck and cry my broken heart out, but of course he's still in town, merrily toting Lavinia on her mysterious errand. I consider going upstairs to pester Pollux till I'm thoroughly distracted or even just stretch out beside him on the bed so I don't have to weather this new hurt alone, but that doesn't quite seem like the right thing to do, even though I strongly suspect he wouldn't mind.

I want – _need_ – someone to hold me while I ache and whimper and sob; someone to stroke my back and lay their cheek on my hair as they murmur gentle soothing things, but there are no such comforting arms for me here. Peeta would hold me in a heartbeat, of course, but I can't expect him to comfort my grief at discovering the identity of his beloved.

So I retreat to the back door of the workshop, sit on the edge of the stoop, and curl around myself, burying my face between my bent knees.

 _None of this is new except for her name,_ I remind myself firmly, though it does nothing to staunch or even slow the tears, _and it's not surprising in the least that Peeta's sweetheart should be the prettiest girl in Twelve._

I have far too much work to finish today to sit here crying for an hour. Ten minutes, however, seems very reasonable.

The tears trickle forth like a quiet stream, unceasing and unbidden, and I will the heartbreak to leave my body with them. Loving Peeta means wanting what's right for him, even and especially if that isn't me, and it's never going to get easier. Soon I'll be making courting gifts and wedding gifts for his bride and, all too soon after that, baby gifts –

I raise my head from the burrow of my knees with a soft cry of pure agony. _Will I catch a little rabbit-skin to make a baby bunting for Peeta and Columbine's child?_ I ask the woods in a silent shriek. _For their beautiful star-child with soft white skin, golden curls and silver eyes?_

Will I bring home game and roots and berries for their table and then cook for them while they curl together on the sofa like Peeta and I did this morning, only with a great deal more kissing and passion? Where will I look when Columbine sits in my corner of the sofa, wrapped in Peeta's snowy bearskin and nursing their perfect baby? Will I be expected to sleep across the hall from their bridal bed of sunset and listen to their pleasured gasps and cries and words of love for the rest of my life?

How can I do it? How will I bear it?

A quiet chirrup sounds nearby, but there's no food back here. There's _never_ food back here – except yesterday, of course, when Peeta brought me that heartbreaking little dove cake, and there are certainly no crumbs of it remaining outside of my drawer of precious things.

"Go away, greedy thing," I cry to the open air, swiping at my hot eyes. "I don't have anything for you."

The chirrup comes again and this time my eyes find the source: a mourning dove – no, _my_ mourning dove – little more than an arm's length away from the toes of my boots with a small red object in her beak. She sets it down in the snow between us and peers up at me with her black-bead eyes.

It's a half of a tiny cranberry, pecked free from its string on the apple tree.

When she's certain she holds my attention, she dips her head again and gives the berry fragment a little nudge toward me.

It takes over a minute for the realization to dawn.

My mourning dove has brought me food; has _harvested_ food and brought it to me in my grief. A wild creature is showing gentleness, compassion – perhaps even the shy beginnings of devotion – toward a huntress.

I'm being tamed _by_ a bird.

" _Oh!_ " I breathe, clapping a hand to my mouth in disbelief, and fresh hot tears pool in my eyes.

_The woods loves you, little Katniss. The woods and everything in it._

Peeta saw it. The spirit of my long-dead aunt saw it.

I am loved by the woods; truly, deeply _loved_. It provides for me, protects me, and now shows me undeniable care.

The dove waits, silent and unblinking and so very patient, and now I know beyond a doubt that she's descended from my father's dove because she's acting like _him_ – like my father himself; not like a dove, even a tamed one – and he's been dead too long for this young bird to ever have witnessed him at his taming.

I wonder how many wise and gentle doves populate these woods, just waiting for a sad and lonely human to tame.

I reach cautiously for the berry with two fingers and the dove skitters back in the snow a little but doesn't fly away. "There's plenty for two here," I whisper, raising the half-berry to my mouth and taking an infinitesimally small bite of its tart, icy flesh before rolling the remaining portion into my palm and holding it out to her.

The dove cocks her head and eyes me for long moment, and I tip my palm to let the berry roll off into the snow toward her. She retrieves it with two pecks and places it directly back on the edge of my palm nearest to her.

Sharing, it seems, is something we'll have to work on.

"Oh, little sweetheart," I whisper. "Thank you so much."

I carefully take the berry with my opposite hand and bring it to my mouth. It half melts on my tongue; a frozen bead of sharp, sweet tartness that tastes like New Year's kisses and makes happiness feel possible again. My open palm I leave hovering over the snow, hopeful that a careful finger-stroke might be possible, but once the berry is gone the dove flies off in a familiar chittering-whistle of wings.

I'm still sitting, silent and stunned, where she left me when she returns with a second cranberry, this one almost whole, to deposit on the toe of my boot, and I laugh through my tears. "Am I your chick?" I tease her gently. "Do I look hungry and abandoned?" But I've loved her from the first and this is all so wonderfully impossible – truly, something out of a fairy tale – and of course I don't mind her ministrations one bit.

She brings me two more berries after that, depositing each one in my hand and waiting till I eat it entirely before leaving for another, and in a burst of wild nerve I go back into the shop after the fourth berry but leave the door open. It's madness to expect a wild creature to follow me into a building at the start of such a shyly kindled friendship but somehow, impossibly, she does.

I'm standing beside the workbench, watching and waiting, when I hear the beloved whistle of returning wings. The dove lands on the back stoop where I had been sitting and lingers there curiously for about three seconds before fluttering through the open doorway and up onto the bench.

I wonder briefly if she's sick, this dove, to come so close and perch so boldly on a huntress's table with half a dozen knives in easy reach, but no: she sets down a fifth cranberry on the clean sheet of butcher paper and looks up at me expectantly. "I'm more than happy to eat your food, little mama," I reply, almost overcome by her persistence, "but I have to go back to work now. You –" My voice breaks, and I wonder why I'm so nervous about making an offer to a bird who surely can't understand human speech. "Y-You could stay, though, if you like," I croak out. "I, um…there's no blood or brains or meat today, just…just stretching and sanding, and if…i-if you were okay with that, you could…could…"

She's still on the workbench, still watching me, and I breathlessly inch my hand toward her, palm up and open. I only mean to get near enough to touch her dusky breast with the edge of my finger, but I'm not quite close enough to do that when she hops into my palm.

Small clawed feet perch trustingly on a human hand for the first time since my father died. " _Oh,_ little one!" I breathe. She's heavier than the blackbirds I used to make meals of, but not by much, and she's so beautiful I want to cry all over again.

It's too soon, far too soon to even _dream_ of more, but this is Peeta's fairytale world and this dove has chosen me, and so I lift her gently to eye level and brush her smooth cream-coffee breast with the trembling fingers of my left hand.

We're the same color, just as I'd guessed; my skin a dusky dove-brown that matches her feathers as though painted by the same brush. "Are you mine, little one?" I wonder, daring a fingertip-stroke across her tiny head, and she closes her black-bead eyes in unmistakable pleasure.

It's as inevitable as it is irresistible. I lean in, almost without thought, to brush her head with my lips, and she answers with a hushed, throaty coo that exudes sheer contentment. " _Oh,_ I love you!" I whisper, my eyes beading with disbelief and joy and an overwhelming flood of affection for this first wild thing to reach out to me, to trust and love and care for the huntress who's killed so many of the woods' inhabitants for food and furs and nourishing bone broth. I should be more like my patient father but I'm too sad, too eager, too hungry for more, and I curl my free hand around my tiny sweetheart and bring her to my chest, pressing her gently over my heart.

Thankfully, this particular dove has waited a long time to tame me and doesn't flail or strain or struggle at the sudden intensity of contact; rather, she curls her tiny claws in the weave of my sweater and coos drowsily as I stroke her in wonder, over and over again.

 _Taming goes both ways,_ my father says in Peeta's voice, and with a mourning dove nestled against my heart, I finally understand what this means. There must be trust and a measure of surrender on both sides, especially when you endeavor to tame something bigger, stronger, or more dangerous than yourself. This dove tamed me, not the other way around; she came back to me again and again with food, knowing full well that I could hurt or even kill her, until I finally reached out for her touch.

There's a sort of legend – my father's own account, but surely more fairy tale than truth – that the cougar Granny Ashpet killed to save Grandpa Asa was like a sister to her. Two huntresses sharing territory and a sort of mutual respect – sometimes even a portion of their kills, Dad claimed, but even he was never quite sure who had tamed whom.

That tale weaves itself through the present moment and brings to mind Peeta, the powerful yet impossibly gentle boy who chose to tame the wildest, perhaps deadliest creature in these woods without promise or hope of reward, and I marvel at the trust and surrender he's demonstrated toward me. From our first moments alone in the sleigh I snapped and snarled at him as fiercely as any cougar and yet, like this dove, he's persistently put himself at my mercy, holding out his hand or opening his arms to me. Twice this morning he lay without resistance or protest of any kind as I climbed over him, nuzzling his throat and kissing him to bits like the merriest, most besotted of kits, and these moments turn the concept of taming on its head. In a true taming the wild thing is always in control, of course, but I had never before realized how the tamer must also trust – must, in their patience, surrender to the tamed one, and ultimately be tamed in their turn.

I rub my cheek against my dove's velvet shoulder and give a quiet coo of my own. " _Catching and taming are very different things,_ " I quote softly. "A bird learns patience where a girl learns trust, but in the end both are tamed."

I try to pace myself, to not be too greedy with my finger-strokes and kisses and nuzzles, and it's only minutely easier to exercise restraint with my dove than with Peeta. I wonder if my father would be disappointed in this behavior and decide almost at once that he would be amused, perhaps even pleased with me. After all, I'm the tamed one in this scenario, not the tamer, and therefore not subject to the same rules of _patience and optimism and hope beyond hope_ ; of _careful movements and soft words_. I handle her so gently – more gently than I would ever have dreamt I was capable of – and murmur all manner of tender nonsense against soft powdery feathers, but my brave dove demonstrates nothing short of bliss in the nest of my cupped hands, and I wonder how long and patiently she's waited for this moment.

I wonder how long and patiently Peeta has waited to be pounced upon and nipped and nuzzled and veil my burning cheek against sweet dusky feathers that perfectly mirror my own skin. I can't imagine why he'd want any of that from me, especially when his heart belongs so thoroughly to beautiful Columbine Wilhearn, but I also have no interest in questioning it. I'm his companion – his songbird, his vixen, his greedy little gosling – and while I can't begin to comprehend it, he responded to this morning's exuberant displays of affection with a bliss to rival that of the dove presently nestled against my heart.

"I love you," I tell her again, as natural and fearless as breathing, and wonder if I might say the same to Peeta with equal ease. I'm more animal than human to him, really – in a beautiful fashion, not a condescending one – and the love of a wild thing is twice as precious as its trust. It would be little more than another effusive response from a small gray fox who's dizzily happy to be tamed by her prince – nothing like a Seam girl telling a Merchant boy that she loves him. That she wants to wear his ribbons and share a dance at the Harvest Festival and toast bread together over his parents' hearth, to lie in his bed and kiss his mouth and take his golden light inside her.

I think of the pressure in my heart every time I'm in his presence: pleasant but painful, swollen up with love as it is, and wonder if saying the words to him just once would ease it, even a little.

"Perhaps," I whisper to my dove, and my heart quavers a little at my daring. "Perhaps I might."

Of course, these words serve all too well as a reminder of the task I've forsaken in order to cuddle my new friend, and I lay my cheek against her wing as I admit, "I really _do_ have to get back to work, little one. I'm making a deerskin blanket for my sweetheart, and today that means stretching the skin. Would…would you like to stay for a little?" I wonder tremulously. "Or…or would you rather go back out with your friends?"

All at once I feel terrible for holding her so long, however content she seemed to be, and guide her up onto my right hand, to hold her out at arm's length. "You're free," I choke out, because with a wild thing there is no guarantee that a display of affection, even if initiated by the animal, will ever be repeated, and the last several minutes were effectively my own doing. This dove may well have satisfied her curiosity about human touch and never come near me again, except to claim her portion of kitchen scraps, and even then she might never again draw nearer than any of her greedy fellows. "I didn't mean to…to _confine_ you," I whisper, "and if you'd like to go –"

She takes wing at the bidding, as I half expected – but not to fly away. Instead, she flutters with a merry wing-whistle to perch atop my head, as particularly friendly or curious birds did to my father, every now and again, on our foraging walks in the woods, and just like him, I respond in joyous laughter, albeit with a mist of happy tears at the corners of my eyes. "Fair enough," I chuckle. "I'll even plait a braid-nest up there if you like, but today I need to look out for my sweetheart ribbons." I reach up to coax her onto my hand again and bring her down to my left shoulder. "My sweater is hardier than those ribbons," I tell her delicately, with a finger-caress the length of one tucked wing, and wonder if Lavinia will raise a brow at the presence of dove droppings on my clothing.

To my surprise the dove inches a little closer to my neck, ducking under my dancing pigtail as I return to my hide-stretching and fluffing up her feathers, so near they brush the tender skin like a shy and fleeting kiss. "If you're planning to stick around," I tease, turning a little to stroke her with my cheek, "I suppose we ought to name you."

And for the second time this morning I play a name-guessing game, but this time it's a happy one. I've never had an animal of my own to name, and the task presents a unique sort of challenge. The first to come to mind is "Laurel," curiously enough, but it feels odd to name my dove for a person, especially one who seems so alive in my subconscious, so I try to think of things related to my new life here – white bears and snow maidens and the huntress-moon's longing love for the sun – but nothing feels quite right. "Moon-dove," I try on my tongue, like an endearment, then, with a little laugh: "Cream-Coffee?"

I think of honey, cream, and cloves; of bread pudding and sticky buns and ginger cake slathered in custard. The comfort of earth and spice, of taming and nuzzles and _Peeta_. "Nutmeg!" I exclaim, making her start a little in surprise, and this one's better than the rest but still not quite right.

I frown and caress her idly with my knuckles. I don't like creative problems with several possible answers – not simply a single correct one – to evaluate individually and choose between. A name for a wild thing is little better than a nickname, really, so I'd do just as well to call her something silly like "Chirrup," "Flutter," or "Coo."

But this dove is special beyond measure and deserves to be addressed accordingly. "Oh, little sweetheart," I sigh in defeat – and just like that, I have my answer.

" _Acushla_ ," I breathe.

Most people who still use that ancient fairy-tongue endearment toss it about like a casual _sweetheart_ or _darling_ , but my father always spoke it with a certain reverence, and when I asked him what it meant, he did a strange thing – the same thing, he said, that Grandpa Asa did when Granny Ashpet asked him the same question – albeit with far more exasperation than I had. He sat me down beside him – we were in the woods that day and took a fallen tree for our bench – and brought my cheek to his chest, so my ear rested over his heart.

 _Do you hear it, catkin?_ he asked, and I nodded eagerly against him. I knew the sound of my father's heartbeat better than any bird call or peeper's song: so strong and steady and safe, it was, and I loved it more than every other sound in all the world, save for his beautiful voice. When we napped together on Sunday afternoons I often wriggled up to pillow my head on his chest for that very reason: to fall asleep to the beloved pulse of my father's heart.

 _That is acushla,_ he said softly. _The pulse of my heart._

' _Acushla' is something of a shorthand,_ he went on. _'Acushla machree,'_ _it should be – but so much has been lost to time, and the meaning effectively remains the same. For on its own acushla simply means 'pulse,' and a pulse requires a heart, and in whose heart but your own would you wish your beloved's name to pulse?_

I pressed my ear against his heart again, insistently this time, and strained with all my might, as though I might be able to make out the syllables of my mother's name if I listened hard enough, and my father, chuckling in perfect understanding, lifted me up to sit in his lap. _My mama claimed she heard her name in the pulse of my papa's heart that day,_ he said, _and that frightened the living daylights out of her. She so badly didn't want to care for that scrawny, helpless toymaker, but when she heard her name echoed by his heart – his weak miner's heart, pulsing her name like a beacon of pure, radiant love:_ Ash-pet, Ash-pet, Ash-pet _– she tore off into the woods like a pack of wild dogs was in pursuit._

 _The hounds of love,_ he chuckled, and I lifted my head with a start. _Do we need to watch out for them?_ I wondered foolishly, for even the smallest threat in the woods was not to be ignored.

He regarded me solemnly for a long moment, tracing my cheek with a fingertip. _Yes, catkin,_ he said at last, _I think your fierce little fox-heart will run from love, but not so stubbornly, nor so long, as your granny's._

 _Don't be afraid,_ he soothed to my wide eyes. _The flight is a frightful thing, perhaps, but the capture is not. It is nothing more nor less than being caught up in the arms of the one you already love with all your might; dropping your every last defense and allowing their heart to touch your own._

 _Was that the day Grandpa Asa found her in the shack?_ I asked. _The day she listened to his heart and ran from what it said?_

My father laughed at this, but so gently. _No, that was still many months in coming,_ he replied, _but as a direct result of that flight, if you will – for_ _that was the day she found the first white doe. She half stumbled upon it,_ he explained, _so blinded was she in her flight, and was almost afraid to shoot it, for she had never seen its like in the woods and white deer are rumored to be magical creatures, imbued with strange and wondrous powers. In the end she thought of the three small sisters of the scrawny boy who loved her and resolved to use the profits of this fine animal for their benefit – or so she told herself. She could sell the meat and blood and bone, even the organs, for a fine price and hide away those funds till such a time as she could convey them – slowly, of course, and in secret – to the girls or to their mother._

 _And the deerskin?_ I prompted, for I knew only how it ended up, not how it got there.

 _The skin she tanned with breathless care, even reverence,_ he said _, and smoked delicately, keeping it as pale as she could to reflect the beauty of the living doe. She was certain she would never find a fitting use for such a treasure, not even when she found the second white doe and had two perfect ivory skins to wrap and store and puzzle over. One day her hands simply reached for those carefully parceled skins and began to shape them into a beautiful garment, such as might be worn by a woodland queen on her wedding day – without informing her head, she told me, and bypassing her stubborn heart altogether. Even when she slipped it on for fittings, the obvious reason for its creation eluded her, even as she sang of love and fitted my papa's ten-penny clasps into her hair._

 _T'was a pity she could not lay her cheek upon her breast and listen to her own heart,_ he concluded with a soft smile, _for that might have saved a bit of time – though like as not, my mama would have been even more terrified to hear the toymaker's name echoed by her heart than she was to hear her own name upon his. Though she never said as much, I suspect she heard it in her slumber,_ he confided, _curled on her side like a small burrowing creature with an arm beneath her head. The wrist-pulse is weaker and yet distinct,_ he said, _and her stubborn heart was bursting with love by the time she finally surrendered to its longing. It would have sought any and every opportunity to make itself heard._

I brought my wrist to my ear and pressed as hard as I could, closing my eyes and straining to hear the secret that echoed in the pulse of my own heart, but my father drew it away with another gentle laugh and a sound kiss to my forehead. _Oh, catkin,_ he assured me, _when your heart finds its mate, you will not need to listen at pulses to know his name._

Smiling at the memory, I tip my head and lift my shoulder a little, bringing my dove close enough to rub my cheek against her. " _Acushla machree,_ " I murmur, thinking again of the secret loves stored within doves' hearts, and wonder if this gentle, intuitive moon-bird is up to the monumental weight of my own impossible love.

Under the right circumstances, I think my heart might well chirrup and coo…and even take wing with a chittering whistle.

I press a kiss to her tiny head and feel my heart ease a little with our shared burden. This brave, patient dove could not have come to me at a better time. "Oh, Acushla," I sigh. " _Thank you,_ so very much."

Content with her naming and the tasks that occupy my hands and focus, Acushla alternates between a perch on my shoulder and a nest at the base of my neck, depending on how vigorously I'm working at any given moment. I tell her the origin of her name and a little about Granny Ashpet, the stubborn, beautiful huntress with her mysterious elf-king father and secret burrow of courting gifts from a poor, plain toymaker, and I'm just about to sing her a little of the ancient lover's song when a discreet knock sounds at the back door of the workshop.

I don't need to listen for the sound of rapidly retreating boots in snow.

I grin at Acushla, my heart fiercely aglow. "That's lunch, I reckon," I inform her merrily. "Shall we see what the sweet sun-boy has left for us?"

Lunch awaits in a basket today, with a jaunty red ribbon tied about its handle and a note tucked beneath the lip of its lid:

_Greedy gosling,_

_I hope I packed enough for both you and your new friend. I wanted so badly to come in and say hello, but she's a shy one and I didn't want to interrupt your time together._

_I'm sorry to leave you to another solo meal, but I'm dizzy from this morning's vixen-cuddling and wanted to work through lunch on your present. Hope okay. Will endeavor to compensate with supper._

_Your affectionate Gander_

_P.S. I've enclosed an initial sketch for our storybook. I hope I made the babies right._

All thoughts of food forgotten – to say nothing of the realization that, somehow or other, Peeta has seen me with Acushla already – I set aside the note with a kiss to its sweet words and toss back the lid of the basket. Placed atop our meal is an exquisite pencil drawing, splashed here and there with gentle color, that makes my breath catch in a whimper.

In a nest of earth and evergreen boughs lies a fox kit furred with damp tufts of pale golden down; its eyes closed tightly and its body still curled from the confines of its moon-patterned egg, the luminous fragments of which lie scattered about its small, spent form. Beside the kit lies a newborn gosling, its sleek black fur still sticky from the womb, but its eyes are open, bright and eager, and its small dark bill is raised and parted slightly in a plaintive _peep_!

No, not a kit and a gosling: a goslit and a kitling, the offspring of a honey-feathered gander and a small black fox.

I hug the sketch to my heart with a quiet cry, overcome by the need to cradle these precious, impossible twins; to nurse my downy kitling, so weary from the efforts of hatching, and cuddle my silken goslit as I guide tender water grasses and tiny katniss blooms to its peeping mouth. "Oh, Acushla," I whisper. "How does he know? How can he see them so clearly?"

 _How,_ cries my heart, painfully aware of the reality of Columbine Wilhearn, _can he see these babes –_ draw _these babes – in such detail, down to the moon-pattern of the kitling's egg, and not realize they're his children, birthed by you?_

"It's just as well," I tell my heart, by way of Acushla. "I told him it was a folktale – the gander and the vixen – and he's depicting it as such, embellishing with pretty details from other stories and our life here in the woods. It's impossible for these babies to exist anyway," I remind us both, "so why should he even bother to imagine who their parents might be?"

She answers this with a distinctly askance look in her black-bead eyes, but before I can counter with some manner of cross or clever retort we hear the wide wooden doors of the stable creak open and Acushla, startled by the noise, flies out the back door with a chittering whistle of dusky wings.

To my surprise, I'm not dismayed in the least by her departure. I still have a basketful of food for her to partake in, after all, and as much as I think she enjoyed having the last word in our conversation, I suspect she'll be back for more.

That, and perhaps she cares for me a little.

Grinning like a fool at the thought, I tuck Peeta's precious picture back inside the basket and carry it in to the workbench but leave the back door open, just in case Acushla should return, before heading up to investigate the new arrival. It's Lavinia, of course, bright-cheeked from the cold and suspiciously empty-handed, save for my fine new skis tucked under an arm, as she leads a frosty-coated – and equally unburdened – Rye inside.

"And just where is this special thing you so urgently had to fetch?" I ask, only half-teasing, as I approach, eyeing them both like a hawk. Rye gives a delighted whuffle in greeting and instantly dips his nose toward my hip pocket, where several sugar cubes still remain, and I give his neck an affectionate scratch, right along the line of his mane, while Lavinia raises a brow and looks askance at my left shoulder, in a manner amusingly similar to Acushla.

"I have a new friend," I inform her, "who isn't quite trained to indoor living as yet. I'll wash it myself," I finagle, "if you tell me what my present is – or even _where_ it is."

It's a pointless offer, really, since Lavinia has happily scrubbed much nastier things out of my hunting clothes from the first and wouldn't dream of making me rinse out a few good clean bird droppings, but I'm impatient to see what was so needful that Peeta tried hauling Pollux out of bed to fetch it. There's no guarantee that it's a present, of course, but Pollux's attitude toward me earlier more than suggests that whatever she brought back is intended for me in some way.

Lavinia shakes her head with a grin and produces a small piece of paper from her coat pocket. I expect the contents to be written by her, perhaps in anticipation of this moment, but instead Peeta's beloved handwriting reaches out to me like a sweetheart's embrace.

_No clues, little snoop, and no poking your sly snout in at windows or doors either. I shall need till precisely 5:00 to enact my secret plans and your patience will be handsomely rewarded._

_If desired, I will arrange a bedtime cuddle-nest for you in exchange for a story._

_Your grateful and devoted servant,_

_Lonely Gander_

_P.S. Would consider a short song in place of a story._

I look up from the note with a tingling belly and melting bones. I can't begin to guess what Peeta is planning for this evening but it sounds like a repeat of last night, only with a meal prepared by him rather than his brother – the only factor that, if hard-pressed, I could have called less than perfect. I wonder if he means for us to share the cuddle-nest all night and that sweet warm ache, damp and yearning and heavy with emptiness, kindles deep between my hipbones. It's startling and oddly wonderful – or rather, like the faintest flicker of something _impossibly_ wonderful, lying just out of reach – and I try to imagine what this exquisite hollowness could possibly have to do with Peeta, and why feeling him nestled between my legs makes it better and worse all at once.

Lavinia takes merry advantage of my distraction, depositing Rye's reins in my free hand with a chuckle before going to put away the skis, and I lean in to nuzzle my cheek against the pony's, grateful to have my confidante back at last. "You'll give me a hint about my surprise, won't you, lazy lump?" I murmur teasingly, filling my lungs with the comforting odors of pony-musk and brisk air and all those elusive whispers of winter-in-Twelve, and I curl an arm about his broad brown neck. "I have a new friend," I tell him. "A wee moon-bird who brought me berries and perched on my head and kept me company for most of the morning. She knows my secret too."

Impatient with cuddles and confidences when there's sugar to be had, Rye whuffles stubbornly and makes another nose-dive at my pocket; this one determined, with a flash of a grazer's strong teeth. I nip out of reach, giggling at his single-minded persistence, and bring out one lonely sugar cube, which he lips up eagerly before dipping his head down in search of another.

"You only allowed me _one_ secret," I remind him, "and gave me one impatient little whuffle in return. That equals _one_ cube, greedy thing. If you stay with me while I'm working, like Acushla does," I tease, "maybe you can have another. Or maybe I'll just give them all to her."

There's a scramble of heavy, frantic footfalls on the steps, causing both Rye and me to look up with curiosity and amusement, and Pollux charges in, sleep-rumpled and still half-dressed in his trousers, thermal shirt, and suspenders. He meets Lavinia on her return from the ski cupboard and veritably leaps on her, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her with startling force – no, not force: _hunger._ A voracious kiss, the kind boys and girls exchange against the school wall and behind the Hob.

The way I would never in a million years have thought Pollux could kiss anybody.

Lavinia tolerates it for a few breathless seconds, then she pushes him back with a laugh and ducks under his arm to return to Rye, but she's barely taken the reins from my hand when Pollux is behind her, his arms curled around her waist and his face buried in her neck – or rather, as best he can access it between her scarf and coat collar. She laughs again, but breathily, and gives his mussed head an affectionate sort of pat, to which he responds with a desperate tug at her throat coverings and a muffled groan as his mouth finally meets her skin.

She gives a shallow sigh and flashes me a look of supreme apology as she hands back the reins, but there's something soft and hungry in her eyes that I've never seen before, and no sooner do I have the pony in hand once more than Lavinia turns in her husband's arms, but not to kiss him. She holds him at arm's length with a gloved hand on his chest and tilts her sparrow-capped head in an expression that I can only guess at, with her back to me, but it must present a satisfying counter-offer, because she doesn't resist or laugh when Pollux scoops her up in his arms. Instead she tugs off the cap, letting her glorious hair tumble free, and leans in to press a brief, careful kiss to his mouth.

Burdened with his prize, Pollux turns for the stairs and ascends, stocking-footed, with an agility I wouldn't have dreamt he possessed. And because I'm already so stunned by everything that's just unfolded before me, I let the reins slip from nerveless fingers and follow silently after, my heart beating loud and thickly in my ears.

People don't lie down together in the middle of the day. Not for cuddling and a few stolen hours of extra slumber.

I don't know why I do it. I have no intention of watching Pollux and Lavinia at their lovemaking and I certainly don't _want_ to, but upon reaching the top of the stairs all I can do is stare, slack-jawed and transfixed and riveted to the spot.

Somehow Lavinia is even more excruciatingly beautiful without clothes on.

She hooks her deft white fingers under Pollux's suspenders and tugs them down, then drags his shirt up and over his head, and all the while he's kissing her – lips, ears, throat, collarbones; whatever he can reach – with hushed, tremulous moans, as though he can't quite believe any of this is happening. Once his shirt is gone Lavinia sinks back against the pillows and he moves up eagerly in response, closing his bearded mouth around one perfect pale breast and winning a pleasured little mewl in return as her fingers delve for purchase in his thick hair.

He lingers at her breasts like a starving man at a lavish meal: now gazing with hunger and longing, now nibbling, now devouring, his mouth enveloping one plump peak as his strong fingers explore the other, drifting and stroking and squeezing in counterpoint to the wet sounds of vigorous sucks and swallows and low guttural moans. Lavinia's face is soft and rapturous and she arches a little beneath him, both hands buried in his hair, as though beseeching for more. They continue like this for an eternity then Pollux slowly lifts his head, letting her breast slip from his mouth with a gentle bounce, and kisses his way to the curve of her belly.

My neck and chest catch fire and my heart lobs against my eardrums like muffled hammer blows, but still I can't look away.

Kneeling between his wife's legs, Pollux curls his arms beneath her backside and gently angles her hips, pressing lingering open-mouthed kisses over every inch of skin between her hipbones and then repeating the path with slow nuzzles of first one bearded cheek, then the other. Lavinia leans up on her elbows, watching him with blatant adoration, and raises one finger to trace his mouth.

He moves lower still then, his face sinking into the bush of dark curls between her legs with a long, shuddering moan, and something jolts in my belly in response. An almost violent tremor, halfway between shock and disgust and a fierce, bizarre longing, but whatever it is, I'm grateful, because it shatters my paralysis. I scramble back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as I can and reach the safety of the stable hot and shaken and even trembling a little.

In the sudden absence of all of his caretakers, Rye – still in his harness – has wandered into his stall and is presently nosing about the corners of his hay bin, which Pollux, remaining crossly abed all morning and now thoroughly preoccupied there with his beautiful naked wife, hasn't yet refilled. I absently fetch a few generous pitchforks' worth of hay along with a scoop of oats then go out to close the heavy front doors, but the frigid air cools the fire in my skin, if not my blood, so instead I hunker down on the threshold to breathe in more icy comfort.

 _It's not so different from Mom and Dad in their day,_ I tell myself. While some of what Pollux and Lavinia were doing was startling to my eyes – eyes that are no longer those of a small child, to whom lovers' gestures are silly at best and embarrassing at the worst – to the best of my knowledge, it's all part and parcel of lovemaking with your spouse. Or maybe it's what lovemaking looks like in the Capitol.

It must be nice for your husband to kiss you _everywhere_ …

I think of Peeta's soft, sweet mouth closing around my breast rather than the round pad of my toe – that beloved, greedy minnow-mouth lapping, nibbling, gobbling at my nipple like a ripe little fruit – and I curl around myself with a cry. The thought of it almost _hurts_ , but not like any kind of pain I've ever known before. It hurts like a void, like the hot ache of emptiness in my belly, only even more acute. Unbidden, I envision myself in Lavinia's place, lying naked beneath the stable rafters and looking on in adoration as Peeta buries his face in the hair between my legs, and I bite down on my knuckle with a whimper. The secret part of me is damp again – no, more than damp: _wet,_ like during my menses, but the ache that seems to cause it is nothing like the pain of menstrual cramps. It hurts and almost – _almost_ – feels good at the same time, like the anticipation of something that just might be _wondrous_ , only something – some terribly crucial element – is missing.

Somehow I know that this _something_ is the act itself; these things that I'm envisioning. Maybe this kind of daydream, especially after witnessing what I just have, is so _real_ that the body reacts accordingly, flooding you with vivid sensations, as though you actually _were_ on the brink of that experience.

 _What is_ happening _to me?_ I cry silently to the snow-blanketed garden, the apple tree with its sparse garland of bright berries, the greedy blackbirds fighting over the last remaining crumbs of breakfast. _Why would anyone even_ want _such things – a grown man's mouth at your breast or his face between your legs – and why does it hurt so exquisitely to envision it? Why is the feel of Peeta's groin against mine so wonderful that I can't seem to get enough? What is this wetness in my secret place and why do thoughts of Peeta provoke it?_

The only reply is a beloved chittering wing-whistle as Acushla flies up out of nowhere to land on my head. "I'm terrible company right now," I warn her, but with no real fire, and she proceeds to peck among the roots of my hair in what is almost certainly a mock-search for crumbs.

"Hungry, are we?" I joke weakly, and reach up to coax her onto my hand. "You're good for me, little mama," I tell her, and peck her tiny head in turn with a quick kiss before relegating her to my shoulder. "Come, let's think about safe things like deerskins and lunch."

I heft the large front doors closed with an echoing _thud_ and hurry past the stairs to the safety of the workshop. I can't hear anything from the loft, thankfully, not even a stray creak of a mattress, but I'm also trying desperately hard not to. Now that I think of it, I realize Pollux and Lavinia could have been upstairs making love any day – _every_ day – that I was working down here. They could have done so all this while and I never knew. It's jarring to consider but not impossible – nor, judging by their actions of a few minutes ago, unlikely either.

It shouldn't bother me that a young married couple is so passionately abandoning themselves in their idle moments – haven't I expected the same will happen when Peeta and Columbine are finally together? – but it does, or rather, not bother so much as _unsettle_. I'm not offended or disgusted by what they're doing, though I haven't a clue how I'm going to look either Pollux or Lavinia in the eye ever again; I'm… _shaken_. Roused. Breathing like I've just run a sprint, fever-flushed and hungry, but not for food, and I hate it. I want to be the child I was when I woke up this morning, pouncing on my sweetheart and kissing him senseless with nary a thought of bare breasts, a lover's mouth, and damp secret places.

As it's the only thing I can think to do, I fetch a handful of fresh snow from out the back door and stuff it down the front of my sweater. I hiss and yelp and squirm, to Acushla's clear amusement, as the icy powder melts its way down my chest to pool in my bra and the waistband of my trousers, but it serves as a fine distraction from my thoughts while cooling my blood enough for me to explore the lunch hamper.

Peeta's prepared a simple but hearty meal today, appropriately heavy on leftover New Year's venison. There's a small crock of hot stew, plus two stray cheese buns – I was certain we'd eaten them all – stuffed with piney morsels of roast venison and crumbles of sweet cheese; a flask of strong cinnamon tea with steeping curls of orange peel; a pouch of cranberries and honey-glazed nuts, perfect for quick sustaining bites when I return to work; a ripe golden pear – and a slice of New Year's wedding cake, as wide as my splayed palm.

I resolve to feed that to Acushla, every last rich crumb of it, but I know it's a hopeless plan.

Ordinarily I'd either eat quickly at the bench, barely stopping at my work, or go out to sit beside the stable stove, but I have several hours to burn before I'm allowed back in the house and I can't quite stomach the prospect of eating by the stove – in the stable at all, really – with Pollux and Lavinia at their lovemaking just above. So I make a hasty clean-up of the droppings on my sweater then bundle up and go out to the garden bench, with Acushla riding along on the beribboned hamper handle.

I've eaten in colder places while far less warmly dressed, and after the luxury of the past two days it feels downright _wonderful_ to eat in the woods, or at least, on the fringe of it – and this time I've got a little friend to share my meal. Acushla perches on my knee and takes crumbs from my hand like it's second nature, and I wonder again how long she's been waiting for this. Even the boldest bird wouldn't adapt to human ways so quickly. I wonder if she took her cues from Peeta and the chipmunk – _an opportunistic rodent teaching a human boy to bring him treats,_ I think with a chuckle, and wonder who tamed whom in that relationship.

I give her a more-than-generous portion of cake – "Enough to make a feast of you if I wanted," I tease, "like Mrs. Cartwright's fat brown hens!" – but I eat every last lick of buttery icing and creamy orange curd myself, which wins me another askance, even _indignant_ , look from those black-bead eyes. "You don't need all this sugar!" I laugh through a mouthful so delicious it almost brings tears to my eyes. "Do you think you're a hummingbird, little beak?"

There's a sink in the loft, of course, but I have no intention of going up there anytime soon – or possibly ever again – so instead I rinse the dishes with some fresh snow, dry them with one of the napkins Peeta provided, and return them to the hamper, then I doff my cardinal cap to tie the new ribbon across my brow like a fairy crown.

"This, of course, is a kiss," I inform Acushla, returned to her perch on the hamper, with a toss of the ribbon's long tails, and grin like a fool. "A proper kiss, nice and long and square on the mouth. I'm not altogether sure I'll be able to redeem it right away," I admit, "but I intend to try."

I wonder if Peeta, so desperate to store up his kisses for the uncertain future, thought about kisses when he tied this ribbon around the hamper handle. Now that I think of it, many of his everyday gifts have had a red ribbon of some size tied about them and I never gave it a second thought till today. Surely he can't have intended kisses in return for a spile or a mug of cream-coffee or, for that matter, a basket of lunch, the likes of which he provides on a daily basis.

Except this morning was all about ribbons and kisses: quick little half-kisses, stored up like sweets in a jar, and long proper kisses for long proper ribbons. Peeta must know that presenting me with any sort of red ribbon at this point is tantamount to giving permission for me to kiss him.

Or _asking_ me to kiss him.

I stand with a frantic little squeak and scoop up the hamper, with a thoroughly confused Acushla clinging to its handle for dear life. "Let's go pick some pinecones," I urge her in a breathless rush. "We've got time and plenty still to finish the deerskin work for the day."

As always, the woods embraces me at once and rapidly soothes my unquiet heart. Acushla suffers the swaying hamper for a few steps before fluttering up to my shoulder, but my father's hunting jacket has served as a bird-perch many times before and I'm not worried overmuch about cleanup. At one point I even playfully cover her with my cap, laughing like a child as her slender body disappears beneath jaunty red knit, save for the very tip of her long tail feathers.

I think I like having a friend.

I start out looking for cones for the living room fire but quickly find myself looking for nice, gift-worthy ones; large or exceptionally pretty or in perfect condition. They were intended for Peeta from the first, of course, but even if he uses the cones for kindling, I want him to have the very finest to choose from.

I love him.

"Peeta's birthday is coming up," I tell Acushla as I bend in pursuit of a long slim cone, still closed up tightly. "Quickly, but not soon enough. I don't think I can wait almost three months to give him the deerskin."

I think of Granny Ashpet building her dowry of wild gifts over several months and wonder how she managed not to burst with anticipation and impatience – or leap on her unsuspecting sweetheart.

"I could make him another, once I know how," I think aloud, "but it won't be exciting after the first one. I'm going to make him something with rabbit skins, of course, but I want there to be kisses too."

Acushla gives a chirp at this, as dry and direct as her bright gaze, and I chuckle. "Not like _that_ , silly thing," I say. "Kisses worked into the present itself. But I can't just tie them around a bough like at New Year's – and anyway, that's not _nearly_ enough kisses."

A brave pair of rabbits watches us from their own lunching-place among the roots of a tree, and I smile slowly as a delicious idea takes shape in my mind. "Acushla," I muse, "I could make a rabbit-skin blanket: a patchwork, like the rag-quilts they make back home and tie with yarn where the squares meet, only instead of yarn I could use thin red ribbon."

I know they sell such a thing at the mercantile, as some of the shops use it at New Year's to tie around daintier sweetheart gifts, like pretty confections or embellished hair clasps. "Every junction would be tied off with a kiss," I explain, my voice rising with excitement. "And I could make it as large as I like, strewn from edge to edge with tiny red kisses – _hummingbird kisses!_ " I squeal, laughing delightedly. "Small and swift and bright; just what he needs in the months to come. More kisses than he could ever dream of!" I conclude, euphoric at the thought.

A beautiful wild gift to keep Peeta warm, spangled like the night sky with tiny, merry kisses-in-keeping, to be cashed in whenever we like.

Of course, Peeta might not want all those kisses, especially on top of the ones I've already stored away – the jar of half-kisses that I still need to show him – but the fact that he wants to save up his kisses suggests that he _values_ them, at least a little, because he wants to make sure of having some in the future. Sixteen years of Seam living have taught me that much. You don't save something that isn't precious in some way – that you don't want to last or don't care if you have in the future.

With a kiss to her tiny head Acushla flutters off into the trees and I practically skip back to the workshop, a hamper of perfect pinecones in tow. I'm sorely tempted to fetch my bow and go back out for a rabbit or two to make a start on Peeta's birthday quilt, but the deerskin is still today's priority, if for no other reason than that Peeta showered me with kisses when he realized what I was planning. As wonderful as it feels to kiss him, being kissed _by_ him – any part of me, in any fashion – is a hundred times more exquisite, and I wonder what I could do to win a kiss of some kind before the day is over. He's already seen to my feet, of course, and thoroughly, with all those eager laps and nibbles and nuzzles at my toes, but maybe I could weasel away a quick little kiss on my knuckles or the top of my head.

I remind myself yet again of Columbine Wilhearn, the absent beloved for whom this woodland palace – and the gentle golden boy dwelling within it – has been so carefully and lovingly prepared, but in the next breath I recognize that Peeta would never do anything to betray that devotion, let alone to hurt his sweetheart. If he chooses to kiss or cuddle me or even share a nest-bed for the night, he's doing so willingly and with the purest of intentions, and while this means that he must feel neither love nor longing for me in any of those tender acts, somehow that feels like anything but a loss. After all, he said just this morning that he _adores_ me, and adoration is exquisitely close to love – not to mention, last night in our cuddle-nest, his breathtaking slip of the tongue had him confessing to a playful sort of love for me, or rather, the _little goose_ side of my disposition.

I allow myself to imagine for one half-second that Peeta's touches might be motivated by love – even the chastest, vaguest, most unromantic sort – and my heart trembles like a trapped rabbit kit.

I wonder again, and wildly, if I dare say it. If love doesn't always mean _in_ love – aching and yearning; ribbons and kisses and toastings and babes – why _shouldn't_ I tell Peeta that I love him? Why shouldn't my sweet lonely boy, for whom tenderness and affection have been such rare gifts, know that he is loved – not by the girl he wishes for, of course, but loved nonetheless?

I debate this silently and endlessly as I shed my cap and jacket, add Peeta's precious notes and the sketch of the goslit and kitling to the hamper of pinecones, and return to working the deerskin. On one hand, both Pollux and Lavinia have told Peeta they love him, ages ago now, and there was never the least suspicion of underlying romantic feelings – but then, they were practically a couple by the time they moved out here. I'm an unattached young girl who's given Peeta handmade gifts, an unmistakable sweetheart ribbon, and several kisses – not to mention those intimate moments this morning, when I caught hold of his backside and rubbed my groin against his or slipped my hands under his shirt and wrapped my legs around his waist. However genuinely unromantic our physical interactions may be, an _I love you_ would mean something far different in such a context, and it might just be the last straw for kind, patient Peeta. What would I do if he sent me away – or worse yet, allowed me to remain here after a gentle but firm lecture explaining that I can't touch and kiss and act toward him the way that I have been these past few days? It would shatter me to be kept at arm's length, however kindly, and I can't do anything to risk it.

I stretch and buff the skin, starting at the top and taking care to work every inch thoroughly, all the way out to the edges, where they're tethered to the frame. It's hot, vigorous work, but it distracts me from all the unsettling thoughts and images of the day, and feeling the skin grow soft beneath my cheek is more than enough reward for my labors. I know I won't manage the velvet texture of Granny Ashpet's bridal doeskins, not on this first attempt and maybe not ever, but as long as the skin is supple enough to wrap around Peeta's shoulders or spread over him like a blanket, I'll be satisfied. I've already made strides of improvement from my first rabbit skins and both Peeta and my companion were moved to tears by those gifts, however crude.

Not to mention, Peeta covered my face with happy kisses at the mere prospect of receiving a deerskin. He'll be over the moon to have this in his hands, no matter how the tanning turns out.

I wonder if he'll use it for anything special. Of course, a blanket or wrap is more than special enough and I can't bear to think of cutting into this painstakingly processed material, but if Peeta asked, I could try to fashion it into a simple sort of garment. It's long enough that I could cut a hole at its center for pulling over his head and he could belt it at the waist like an open-sided tunic, for wearing in warmer weather. It would be a more primitive look than I can quite imagine on Peeta: a native woodsman, like in the oldest tales, requiring a bushy blond beard and long tumbling curls, but I'd oblige if he wanted – and endeavor not to giggle too much in the process.

I wonder suddenly, madly, if he might ever ask me to put on the deerskin myself – after all, I've told him a fair bit about Granny Ashpet and her bridal doeskins and he might be curious for a visual demonstration – and I drop the sandpaper block with a gasp. The best I could do is wrap the skin around my torso and tuck it in at my breasts, which, short as I am, should cover me from armpits to ankles at the least, but still the image feels wild and daring and primal, like a fox-woman or deer-woman in human form, wrapping herself in her shed skin for a modicum of decency. I would certainly have on underwear as well but somehow in this mad daydream I'm naked beneath the deerskin; a doe-bride awaiting her mate's gentle hand at her breast, loosing the garment and baring her slim dusky body to the adoration of his eyes and hands and mouth.

I imagine the velvet hush of deerskin drifting down my body, baring only my little breasts at first, and feel a sweet, soft mouth, damp and so gentle, closing about one dark nipple with a blissful sigh –

I shake myself hard, rubbing an arm across my chest for good measure, and retrieve the dropped sanding block, my face and throat burning. I'm half-tempted to fetch more snow to stuff down my shirt but I'm worried it might actually hurt this time; my breasts feel so tight and sensitive. I don't understand what's happening to me but I need to beat it; even banish it, so I can finish my tanning work and go back to being around Peeta like an ordinary friend without envisioning mouths on bare breasts or igniting that damp, hollow heat between my legs. If I wasn't so mortified at the thought, I'd ask Lavinia what's wrong with me and how to fix it, but I can't think how I'll even manage to look her in the eyes ever again, let alone start a conversation about strange hungers and how they manifest in my body.

The deerskin is progressing better than I could have imagined – it must know it's intended for Peeta and is behaving itself accordingly – and I'm satisfied with the softening a full half-hour before I'm allowed to come back to the house. The final step, smoking the skin to make it washable and set its rich golden hue, is a day's project in itself, and there isn't time to go for a rabbit or seek out another present for Peeta tonight. I could walk in the woods a little and maybe meet up with Acushla again, but it's late enough that she's probably back in her nest, and being alone with my thoughts is the last thing I need right now.

I decide instead to visit Rye and fill him with sugar and secrets till it's time to go in, and I walk out into the stable to see Pollux in the pony's stall, brushing him down, and Lavinia sitting on a stool beside the stove with a parcel in her arms – waiting for me, clearly, because as soon as I enter her line of vision she hops up with a smile and crosses to me, taking hold of my hand and tugging me toward the stairs to the loft.

To say I'm stricken would be a gross understatement. Somehow I'd imagined that Pollux and Lavinia would still be upstairs, either in the midst of lovemaking or slumbering in its aftermath, or maybe Pollux would be working outside and Lavinia would have returned to the house; certainly not that I'd leave the workshop and stumble upon both of them at once – and _never_ that they'd try to bring me upstairs, to the very scene of my mortification.

I shake my head rapidly and take a few steps backward, tugging at Lavinia's hold, but she only chuckles and tows me more firmly, albeit merrily, toward the stairs. Pollux glances over at us and grins before returning to his brushing, and I realize that they can't possibly know that I saw them earlier. They're both acting so ordinary and playful; not embarrassed in the least, even though I'm certain I've gone crimson from head to toe, and so I reluctantly follow Lavinia up the stairs, willing my flush to fade and wishing fervently for a handful of snow in my face.

Upon reaching the loft I'm relieved to find that the bed has been neatly made and the room aired out; it smells like snow and woodsmoke, not the strange tang of sweat and musk and tangled bodies that lingered earlier, faint but jarring. Someone – Lavinia, I shouldn't wonder – has made a clear effort to conceal the fact that this is anything but a lonely bachelor's living space.

When I turn to look at her, her smile is gone, faded to a grave, sympathetic expression as she takes a folded piece of paper from her parcel and hands it to me.

_I know you saw us, and I'm so very sorry._

Horrified, I meet her eyes with a start but she shakes her head, pointing back at the letter.

 _We're always so careful, Katniss. Never when you or Peeta might see or hear, never_ _ever_ _when you're so close by._

_Today was – special. I can't tell you why yet, but Pollux really didn't want to leave me this morning. He would never have acted that way at a simple request from Peeta, and he feels terrible about it now. He never expected me to go to town in his place – he assumed he'd grumble a bit and then leave like any other day – but I was in such good spirits this morning, I just leapt in and made the trip myself, and when I got back he was – we were both – overcome by the need to be close again. It's no excuse for our behavior, but it's the reason for it._

_Pollux doesn't know and I'll make sure he never does. He adores you, utterly and completely, but he also holds you in the highest regard and he would die of shame if he knew you saw, let alone_ _what_ _you saw. I wouldn't put it past him to ask Peeta to send him back to the Capitol, he would be so ashamed._

_Please understand: what we were doing was incredibly intimate, intended for no one's eyes but our own, but there was nothing shameful in it. Pollux would be ashamed not of his actions but that you of all people saw him in such a moment of passionate abandon. If it makes you feel better, Peeta's happened upon us twice, and one of those occasions was an even more intimate moment than the one you witnessed. We've been so guarded since then, but as I said, today was special. I should have taken Pollux back to my room instead of going to the loft with him, but I was caught up in the moment, and I'm so incredibly sorry for putting you in such an awkward position._

"But it wasn't your fault at all!" I blurt, certain that my face, throat and chest are now, literally, on fire. "I just…walked up here like a complete idiot! I had no reason and – and I didn't even _want_ to, I just –"

She puts a hand over my mouth, gently stopping my words, and takes out her slate.

 _I know,_ she writes, _and it's okay._

"But I _saw_ you," I whisper. Somehow that seems to be all the explanation I need.

Her lips curve in a tiny, gentle smile. _I know,_ she writes again, with palpable patience. _And it's okay, Katniss._

The words tumble out before I can stop them. "Is that _normal_?" I squeak. "I mean – what he was…is that just what lovers _do_?"

I'm so convinced she's going to laugh that I almost burst into tears of relief and gratitude when she doesn't. Instead she sets down her parcel and, with the softest, most compassionate expression she's ever worn, she wraps her arms around me and lays her cheek against my hair, making little wordless crooning noises all the while, like a mother soothing a frightened child.

She hugs me so tightly, as though her embrace might somehow tell me the things her mutilated mouth no longer can, and when she lets go of me, it's only to cross quickly to the bed and return with Pollux's notebook, open to a blank page.

 _There is no "normal" in lovemaking, sweet Katniss,_ she writes, _and I'll gut anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. The act is, or should be, as unique as the lovers themselves. A few gestures are instinctive or more common, as certain parts of the body are more sensitive to touch or more appealing to a lover in general, but there is no right or wrong way to engage intimately with your sweetheart, nor should there be._

 _Pollux is shy and bold and clumsy – maybe a little less of the latter now that we've been together for a few months – and it's_ _wonderful_ _. Sometimes he cries, sometimes we both do, because it feels so amazing and sometimes we laugh because it's such an incredibly happy thing. It's just for us – we're not trying to impress each other or anyone else – and it's so_ _good_ _, Katniss._

She looks up at me with a smile and her caramel eyes are a little over-bright, as though she's on the verge of tears, but I simply stare back, even more perplexed and unsettled than I was at the start of this conversation. My mind is half-full of vivid memories of Pollux kissing his way down this woman's beautiful naked body and half-full of hazy visions of Peeta and I in their place. I wonder if Peeta's lovemaking would be shy and bold and clumsy and if he would laugh and cry in turns.

And once again, the words are out before I can stop them. "Would Peeta be like that?" I whisper, and to my shock, Lavinia's teary smile vanishes in an instant, replaced by a look any District citizen recognizes as unmistakable warning. She leads me to the table and quickly scratches out a message on the page before pushing the notebook over to me.

 _NEVER say that out loud._ _Never say anything like that about him where they might hear._

Chastened and confused all at once, I write back: _Because of Columbine?_

She looks up from the question with unfeigned puzzlement – clearly the name means nothing to her, but it's possible that Peeta hasn't told her his sweetheart's name yet – and I add: _Peeta's sweetheart – the Seam girl. Would it endanger her somehow?_

She frowns and tips her head back and forth, as though she needs to untangle or decipher my question. _His sweetheart would be in terrible danger, yes,_ she writes at last. _But so will he. He's told you that much, hasn't he?_

I think back to last night's tale of the valiant baker's son and the Troll who means him harm. The ending was murky at best but if I understand correctly, Peeta can't be with his sweetheart until that vague danger from the Capitol has passed.

I write this in the notebook and Lavinia concurs with a grim nod. _They can't know how close he is,_ she writes. _It's a dance, like Pollux and me, but the stakes are much,_ _much_ _higher and the timing is so crucial._

 _I love him,_ I write in a rush. _He has to be safe and happy, no matter what I have to do to ensure it. Tell me how to protect him –_ _save him_ _– from them._

To my surprise this brings back her smile, albeit a careful, measured variant. _You're already more powerful than they could ever dream,_ she writes cryptically. _Simply continue to do what you've done so beautifully all this while – loving him in that fierce, startled, breathtaking fashion of a wild creature – and you will protect him better than any bodyguard._

None of this makes any sense whatsoever and I attempt to convey as much with a thoroughly lost expression, which wins another smile, this one reaching her beautiful golden eyes. _And further, little goose,_ she writes with a glint of humor, _you can ask questions like the one you asked earlier as long as you ask it in writing and we burn the paper after. But since I doubt that you can put it into words on a page, I'll answer what I think you're wanting to know, though I strongly suspect you already know the answer all too well._

_Peeta Mellark will be the kindest, gentlest, most devoted lover that ever lived. His sweetheart is like a queen in his eyes, so clever and beautiful and so far beyond his reach that I suspect their first time – and indeed, many times after – will be full of hesitation, tears, disbelief, and wonder._

I swallow fiercely at the sob welling in my throat and try to remember why the pairing of _wonder and disbelief_ is so familiar, almost hopeful.

 _I know he is not mine,_ I scratch out, quickly, before the admission can bring tears. _Not mine, never mine, not for me – but when I touch him, hold him, even kiss him, he seems to – not mind it overmuch. It's the most wonderful feeling in the world, being close to him, but I don't want to hurt or anger him or take advantage of his kind nature, and surely the moment will come when –_

Lavinia's hand covers mine to stop the words – clearly, she's been reading as I write – and she shakes her head gently. _I don't know Peeta the way you do, of course, but I can't foresee a day when he would ever push you away or refuse your touch,_ she replies. _He cares for you like no other and he drinks up your touch – your_ _love_ _, even though he doesn't recognize it as such – like a man dying of thirst. You're in far greater danger of spending the rest of the winter entwined with Peeta in a cuddle-nest than you are of him ever pushing you away. To which end!_

She retrieves her parcel and sets it on the table between us, along with the back side of her note from earlier.

_You work so hard and New Year's was the only time you allowed yourself to simply look pretty and enjoy Peeta's company. Without giving away this evening's surprise, I wanted you to have something nice to change into before you go in._

She nudges the parcel toward me and I peel back the paper to find a dress much like the ones she often wears: calico, long-sleeved, almost old-fashioned with its accents of lace and cheery bric-a-brac, but unlike Lavinia's muted blues and greens, this dress is the sunny yellow of a dandelion, patterned with tiny red flowers and tying beneath the breasts with a wide red ribbon. It's the sort of dress a Merchant girl would wear for an autumn picnic in the meadow with her sweetheart – and utterly adorable to boot.

It's the kind of thing Prim should wear, not a wild fox-maiden who's madly in love with a boy she can never, ever have, but I'm strangely delighted by Lavinia's idea. I know Peeta has no interest whatsoever in how I look, but it would be a wonderful surprise to exchange my work clothes – particularly the sweater stained by Acushla's droppings – for a pretty picnicking dress he's never seen before. I never have cause to wear pretty things and less still to put on a dress, and I can't help thinking that Peeta would appreciate the effort: a neatly turned-out companion arriving for supper instead of his everyday huntress, all mucky from tanning.

"You're sure he doesn't have an elaborate bath prepared?" I ask, only half-teasing. "I'd hate to do a quick clean-up and change of clothes out here only to find that he's filled the tub with honey and cream again."

Lavinia shakes her head firmly. _Much_ _too busy for that today,_ she assures me. _While I can guarantee that he_ _wished_ _he had time to make you a bath, preparing your surprise will have taken up his entire afternoon, especially in light of his late start._

"What _did_ you bring from town?" I wheedle without any real hope of a reply. "Can't you even give me a hint?"

She grins. _I brought back exactly_ _one_ _item, aside from your new outfit,_ she answers. _One very specific item that he didn't have already and without which the entire surprise would have been impossible._

While her answer could hardly be vaguer, it's more than I expected and I process the clue accordingly. It's likeliest that the mysterious item is a special ingredient for our supper, and if Peeta didn't have it already it's probably something I've never tasted before. And considering his desperation to get ahold of it for tonight – sending Lavinia to town just for one special item instead of requesting it at the next regular run – I'd hazard a guess that it's going to be one of the most delicious things I've ever had in my life.

"That sounds _wonderful_ – and well worth a change of clothes," I tell Lavinia with a grin.

She helps me out of my sweater, boots, and trousers and into the pretty yellow dress, which is an astonishingly good fit; almost perfect. I've gained some badly needed weight over the past month and slowly begun to develop tiny healthy curves at breast and backside, but I'm still so _little,_ compared to the average Merchant girl who wears ready-made dresses from the mercantile, that it seems impossible Lavinia could have found _anything_ in that shop that would fit me even half this well.

When I remark on this she laughs delightedly. _Little one, the mercantile has stocked their shelves with Katniss-sized EVERYTHING,_ she writes. _You're Victor Peeta Mellark's cherished companion and they're constantly hoping he'll buy you more clothes. I don't even have to look for your size anymore, I just walk in the door and a clerk rushes over to show me all the new stock that they hope will suit your needs._

"Why on earth would they do that?" I sputter, stunned and embarrassed by this news. The mercantile is the largest store in Twelve and I can't even begin to comprehend that they would order special things just for _me_ – or rather, not _for_ me so much as to woo me; to pique my interest and win my business, like I'm someone rich or important.

She laughs again, but gentler this time. _Because a certain wealthy boy is a trifle besotted with you, little goose,_ she writes. _They weren't prepared when he first went in to buy clothes for you and they're afraid they lost business because of it, so they're vigilant now about keeping plenty of Katniss-stock on hand, just in case. It's quite practical if you think about it, and it keeps Peeta's money in the District rather than going directly to the Capitol for commissions and special orders. The grocer does it too – he keeps an extra case of molasses in stock because he knows Peeta makes you a ginger cake every Sunday – and the creamery sets aside two quarts of cream every Monday and Thursday for your coffee._

I flush deeply. I've barely given a moment's thought to the shops back home since moving out here and I never in a million years would have dreamt they would stock special things because of me. It makes sense the way Lavinia explained it – Peeta's orders are probably fairly consistent from week to week and Merchants would naturally want to anticipate these orders so they have the stock on hand when needed – but it's still mortifying to learn that our habits are common knowledge in town.

Lavinia laces me into a pair of little cherry-red shoes, snug but deliciously supple, like a dancer would wear, then writes, _Even the shoe shop keeps you in mind, but I suppose it helps that Peeta's uncle works there. These came ready-made but Marek hand-softened the leather for you. He says you're every inch a fairytale maiden and you had to have a pair of little red dancing shoes, like your beautiful granny, and he wouldn't take payment for them. They're a belated New Year's gift, he said._

It takes me a moment to figure out what he meant. Granny Ashpet never had a special pair of red shoes that I know of but her namesake, the beautiful cinder-lass, did: little red dance-slippers to go with the fine calico dress that she wore to the dance where she met her prince. Ashpet is primarily a Seam heroine, though; a coal miner's daydream, not a Merchant's, and I wonder what could have brought her to the mind of Peeta's bachelor shoemaker uncle – or for that matter, why he would have been thinking about me at all, let alone softening a pair of pretty shoes for me.

Lavinia's already written the answer. _You're more beloved – and important – than you realize, Katniss. You matter a great deal to a lot of people because you matter so much to Peeta._

I wiggle my toes against buttery-soft leather and think of Marko's box of tiny pies, Peeta's father enfolding me in his strong arms as I wept over the hamper of food, and Rooba patiently teaching Peeta how to cut and prepare meat so he could cook for me. It's unbelievable enough that this sweet, gentle boy could care for me at all but it's almost incomprehensible to think of his family, to whom I must mean less than nothing, caring about me by extension.

I let Lavinia guide me into a chair at the table and sit, silent and thoughtful, as she unplaits my hair, carefully removing all the sweetheart ribbons, and brushes it out in long, thorough, decadent strokes from roots to ends that feel so good, they half put me to sleep. _Just wear today's ribbon_ , she advises when she's finished. _The one from the lunch hamper – tie it like a headband. Your hair is so lovely when you leave it down, and I'll bring the other ribbons back to your room._

"Fair enough," I concede, looping the ribbon in question so the band of red satin lies just above my hairline and tying it snugly at my nape. "But if I do that, can we maybe talk like this again sometime?"

The request is made half in jest and it's a weak bargain to boot, but I can't resist. Lavinia is a woman of so few words that the exchange of these past several minutes feels like a lavish gift. It's a comfort I hadn't realized I was missing, having another female to talk to – about _anything_ , really – and after the day I've had, I'm a little terrified of losing it. I doubt I'll ever manage to ask her anything specific about my body or its hot, damp, hunger for more of Peeta, but somehow it's enough to know that I could ask if I wanted.

She smiles warmly in reply and presses a kiss to the top of my head. _Are you sure your pony won't mind?_ she writes.

I chuckle. "He's not exactly the best listener," I inform her, "and anyway, he's not mine."

She looks like she wants to debate this but all she writes is, _Anytime_ _, Katniss. You can ask me anything you like or just talk at me if it helps. I can't promise that I'll always give a satisfying answer but I'd never ignore you. I know I'm not as "chatty" as Pollux but I think it'll help us both to have a girl to talk to, especially now._

I look at her with eyebrows raised in curiosity and she blushes, faintly but unmistakable. I've heard it said that certain girls blush beautifully but this is the first I've ever witnessed it, and it's every bit as true as they say. Lavinia looks like an entirely different person with a dusting of rose in her porcelain cheeks – and somehow more startlingly beautiful than ever.

My instincts inform me that I need to get out of here before Pollux comes rushing back in to make love to his blushing vision of a wife – far more than I need an explanation for said blush. "Thank you," I tell her, a little too quickly. "A-And now I should really get back to the house…"

She eyes me for a moment, as though she can't quite decide whether to giggle at my sudden haste or frown in concern, but she duly steps back to let me up from the table. However, I've barely reached the steps when her fingers curl around the bow at the back of my ribs, gently checking my progress. " _Now_ what?" I demand with an exasperated chuckle, but she only nudges me to go downstairs ahead of her. For some reason she just wanted to slow me down a little, and this begins to make sense when I reach the foot of the stairs and see Pollux peering through what can't be more than a hairline crack between the stable doors. He looks back at us – at Lavinia, actually – and holds up a hand in a halting gesture, though his eyes are positively dancing, then he peeks quickly outside again.

Where, I don't doubt, the final touches are being applied to my surprise.

"You were stalling me, weren't you?" I exclaim, turning about to face Lavinia and debating whether or not to playfully shake her by the shoulders. "You don't care two pins about me having pretty clothes! It was just a back-up plan in case Peeta needed more time –"

She hugs me so hard it squashes the breath from my lungs, laughing and rocking me a little from side to side, and waves Pollux over to borrow his larger slate. _Back-up plan, yes,_ she admits. _But pretty Katniss = also true. The clothes would have gone to you regardless – and the chat too,_ she adds meaningfully, before I can accuse her of only opening up to me to kill a little time and maybe even making up lies to fill more minutes. _Everything I told you was true, even if the telling was suspiciously well-timed._

Pollux, being necessarily dragged into this by the slate around his neck, glances between Lavinia's words and my face with a curious frown, and I'm immensely grateful that he can't guess what his wife and I could have had to talk about for these past several minutes.

"Can I please go see my sweetheart, then?" I ask dutifully. "Or is he still up to mischief just outside the stable door?"

They exchange quick, somber glances and I wonder for a paralyzing moment if I've done it again: if I've inadvertently said something that, if picked up by the Capitol bugs, might endanger Peeta. I've gathered that he has to be extremely careful what he says about his sweetheart – that we both do, I suppose – but of course that's nothing to do with me. My feelings toward him, foolish and hopeless as they are, shouldn't matter to the Capitol in the slightest. I shouldn't have said it so brazenly, of course, but Pollux and Lavinia both know that I love Peeta and my heart is fit to burst with keeping it in. I need to tell _someone_ other than a greedy pony and a sweet, silent dove.

Pollux's bright eyes crinkle ever so slightly at the corners: an eloquent, if cryptic, remark directed solely at his wife, and she releases me with a slow sigh and a wave toward the door.

"I'm sorry," I blurt in a whisper, turning back to face her. "I don't mean to keep –"

But she only shakes her head with a strange smile. _So powerful,_ she writes cryptically on her own slate. _You have no idea, little one._

With an impish swat at my backside she chases me to the door, though Pollux has the good sense to retrieve my hamper and jacket and toss the latter about my shoulders before I plunge out into a bitter January dusk, dressed like a Merchant girl on her way to a picnic or festival, dainty slippers and all. At first glance the path between the stable and the house doesn't look particularly different – and then I spy it, about three feet ahead: a nugget of creamy gold tucked carefully into the snow at the center of the path, like a half-hidden treasure.

I crouch to pick up the mysterious object, which is tantalizingly warm to the touch, and have to stop myself from popping it instantly into my mouth. It looks like a butter cookie "kiss" – a little star-shaped tuft of golden dough – but there's something new in the aroma of this one. Something delicately tart that makes my mouth water at the merest whiff.

I allow myself a nibble – half the cookie in one careful bite – and it melts in my mouth like a bead of sunrise. Sweet, rich, buttery – and yes, _exquisitely_ tart, in the manner of something I tasted last night for the very first time.

And I know _exactly_ what Lavinia brought back from town today.

I have every intention of saving the remaining half of this impossibly perfect cookie to feed to Peeta upon my arrival and then my eyes leap ahead to the rest of the path, where I can make out identical dots of creamy gold tucked into the snow at regular intervals. A path of tiny lemon-flavored butter cookies, leading me to the back door, and I clap a hand over my mouth in sheer delight.

"So you've laid a trail of sweet crumbs, my boy," I muse as I scoop up each still-warm cookie in turn and alternate between greedily stuffing them into my mouth and tucking them into a pocket of my jacket to save for later. "But do you mean to catch or tame, I wonder?" I ask the open air. "And what do you hope to reel in with your decadent little lures: a shy doe or a hungry songbird, perhaps? What will you do if your quarry is a wild and greedy thing, not half so sweet or gentle?"

Whatever Peeta's decided to trap or tame, he's left a reward for following his trail at the back step: a tiny lemon tart, little bigger than the cookies; flaky-crusted with a pale yellow filling that bursts on my tongue and brings tears to my eyes with its sunny, sweet-tart flavor.

 _I love you,_ I inform my pocketsful of precious lemon cookies and the delicate crust-crumbs I lick off my fingers. _I love you so much I'm afraid I'll devour you in kisses the moment we lay eyes on each other._

Breathless with anticipation, I edge open the door to find a mug – my battered little mug from home, so cherished in Peeta's kitchen – waiting just inside, its steaming contents a curious cloudy yellow. Having never drunk anything like this in all my life, my first sip is tiny and cautious and still makes me whimper with pleasure. It's a lemon beverage of some kind, sweetened with fragrant honey and spiced with ginger and cinnamon and cloves, like a tart yellow cider – and the perfect temperature for cozy sipping.

Greedy as I am for more lemon bliss – and knowing that infinitely more must lie just ahead – I don't take the time to sip; rather, I drain the little mug with a greedy moan and leave it on one of the mudroom benches, along with my father's jacket and its store of cookies. I can't begin to guess where Peeta waits for me but a clue lies at the edge of the mudroom: a glittering curl of pale yellow, like a petal from the sun itself.

Thanks to the special New Year's treat Peeta made from the remains of our precious orange, I quickly guess what this might be, but nothing can prepare me for the experience of biting into a tender piece of candied lemon peel. " _Oh!_ " I cry, "oh oh _ohhh!_ " and I wouldn't hold back the ecstasy even if I were capable of doing so. I want to curl up right here and eat candied lemon peel till I cry myself into a stupor over how wonderful it is; each bite so intense that my mouth puckers and tingles and waters all at once.

I almost weep with relief to spy more curls of lemon peel laid out ahead, leading me onward toward the living room. "Oh, sweet boy," I whisper as I fill my hand with golden slivers of sugared bliss. "You've become a skillful hunter indeed."

I round the corner into the living room and almost drop my candied treasure with a squeak. All the furniture has been pushed back to open up the center of the room, where a red-checked cloth has been spread before the fire and covered from edge to edge with food: a winter picnic made of sunshine and pure gold.

There's a platter of herbed venison ribs with a half-lemon laid prominently to either side and a whole roast chicken covered with lemon slices, a bowl of many-grained rice and another of glistening boiled potatoes, a pile of pale sweet buns flecked with something dandelion-bright, with a dish of honey-butter to hand, and a pot of thick golden soup, almost the color of pumpkin but, I suspect, something else entirely and even more magical. There's a mountain of tiny tarts, like the one that awaited me on the back step, and another of lemon butter cookies; a round yellow cake, bright as sunrise, dripping with a sugary white glaze and garnished with delicate curls of candied lemon peel, and a small pretty bowl heaped with the rest of the decadent peels. Finally, nearest the fire stand two ceramic pitchers, one steaming and the mouths of both glinting with pale liquid, along with two mugs, two glasses, and all the other dishes and utensils required for two lovers to partake in this lavish golden feast.

I feel him then, in the shadows of the hall behind me but not encroaching; _never_ encroaching, and my whole being trembles at his nearness. I take three swift steps into the living room – not in evasion; _never_ in evasion – and crouch deftly to pour my handful of candied peels into the bowl atop their fellows for safekeeping and set the hamper to one side, then I linger like a doe at a watering hole: wary and defenseless as I will my sweetheart to approach.

 _Catch me,_ I plead in my mind. _Oh,_ please _catch me, sweet boy._ I've been waiting all day for him to surprise me with his arms and waiting even a few more heartbeats is excruciating.

But those heartbeats pass, and more after that, and still he doesn't reach out, though I can feel the tremble of anticipation and longing in his stillness. He doesn't grab, this boy, no matter how badly he might wish to. He knows, even better than I do, the difference between catching and taming.

 _But I_ am _tame!_ I beseech him silently. _Little prince, I am yours, whole and entire – can't you see it?_

And just like that, I know exactly how – and what – to tell him.

_I shall show you how happy I am!_

I uncurl from my crouch and rise to hurl myself at my waiting boy with a joyous yip, leaping up to wind my legs around his waist, or rather, as best I can in this long skirt. He gasps and teeters a little at the sudden burden but catches me soundly and draws me closer still, his arms beneath my backside as I bury myself in as much of him as I can reach, breathing in greedy lungfuls of melted butter and boy-musk, roast chicken and honey and _lemon_ – _so_ much lemon. _Everywhere_ lemon, tart and sweet and mingling with the beloved scents of his strong, beautiful body.

" _If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life,_ " I quote against his curls, then press half a dozen kisses to them for good measure. Once again we are fox and prince and better served by their dynamic than any pair of fairytale lovers. " _I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others,_ " I murmur." _Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow._

" _And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder?_ " I wonder, and he shifts me back in his embrace; just enough to meet my eyes. His own are dark and enormous, the pupils swollen up as though to drink in every last drop of light in my being.

" _I do not eat bread,_ " I explain in the person of the fox; a line I've never quite understood as, in my experience, foxes seem quite content to make off with whatever food they can clamp their muzzles around; even slices of tessera bread if left unattended long enough." _Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold,_ " I whisper, combing my fingertips through those buoyant, beloved curls." _Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat,_ " I conclude, resting my forehead against his with a long, gusty sigh.

"You would have to go a long way to find wheat, little fox," he says at last, hoarsely.

"There is more than wheat to bring me thoughts of you, little prince," I reply, taking cues from the poetry of the fox's declaration to provide examples from my own experience, and tick off each one with a kiss. "The dry winter grasses with their pale golden stalks," I say tenderly, with a kiss to the crown of his head, "the ripe ears of corn in the grocer's window" – a kiss to his right temple – "the precious jar of creamed honey in the pantry" – a kiss to his left temple – "all of these recall you to me."

"Oh Katniss," he whispers. "Why must you give me so _much_ – and continue to give, again and again and _again_ – even after I beg you to stop?"

These words strike like a blow and I quickly uncurl my legs from his waist in a wounded scramble to free myself, but though he lets me drop to my feet his arms remain about me, not confining – _never_ confining – and yet refusing, this time, to let me flee. "Don't go, little vixen," he murmurs against my brow. "I love everything you've given me and want still more – more than the greediest gosling would ask for in his wildest, most indulgent dreams – but I can give you so little in return. A meal or a silly little drawing –"

"You give me _treasures_ ," I correct him firmly, butting my nose against his cheek. "Rich feasts and cuddle-nests and the most beautiful presents, such as a fairy queen would blush to possess."

"And how many fairy queens do you know," he wonders lightly, "who would blush over a sketch of a goslit and kitling?"

I lean back to meet his eyes with no doubt in my mind that my own cheeks are dark as ripe plums. "They're _perfect,_ Peeta," I breathe. "The babies; _our_ ba – for our storybook," I amend quickly. "You drew them exactly as I'd pictured them. I wanted to –"

I break off abruptly and try to find something fascinating to look at but it's impossible to evade Peeta at this proximity, and while he'd never, _ever_ force me to do or say anything I didn't wish, I can't resist his gentle curiosity. "Wanted to _what_ , Katniss?" he asks softly.

"I-I wanted them to be _my_ babies," I confess in a whisper. "My very own. I wanted to nurse the little kitling – as strange a-and awful as that sounds – a-and cuddle the newborn goslit in our nest…"

"I worked on the wrong present," he says raggedly. "Instead of this silly lemon picnic I should have finished –"

" _No,_ " I tell him without waiting to hear about this other mysterious gift that has something to do with my wild babies and would almost certainly have split my heart open with its beauty. "The picnic is perfect – _beyond_ perfect," I assure him, taking his face in my hands and pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose because it's all I can do not to kiss the sweet, soft, half-parted lips just below. "I'm overwhelmed by all the wonderful things you made."

"You'd never had lemon before," he recalls in a whisper. "And you liked it so much that I wanted you to taste lemon _everything_ – right away, so you'd know I remembered –"

"You remember _everything_ ," I soothe, winding my arms around him and nestling my body into the contours of his. "You notice everything and pay attention to the smallest details."

"Like…like this?" he wonders, and I feel his fingers in my hair, so gentle, tracing the single red ribbon at my hairline. "Your hair was all ribbons this morning, little redcap, but unless I miss my guess, this one is new."

I lean back with a chuckle. "It arrived on the handle of a truly splendid lunch," I reply, "which seemed to occasion wearing it for supper."

"I'm sure the giver is flattered," he says, a smile dancing at the corners of his mouth. "Especially to see it paired with such a stunning new dress – and shoes, too, I think?"

Before I can even begin to guess what he's thinking I'm scooped up in strong arms and cradled to his chest, with my red-slippered feet held aloft to one side for his consideration. "Little red dancing shoes," he declares, more than a little bemused, "and the prettiest calico dress in all the world. My darling vixen, are you trying to tell me that I need to take you to a ball?" he wonders playfully. "Or is there some fairy power at work here?"

"A very wicked and devious redhaired fairy," I reply without hesitation. "She wouldn't let me go in for my supper unless I put on these clothes," I lament, "and she brushed out my braids too."

"I may have to reward this clever fairy," he muses, "or reprimand her; I can't decide. I'm accustomed to dining with a magnificent wild creature and tonight I was sent a princess instead, all merry skirts and dancing shoes and long silky hair."

"If you put a ball gown on a vixen," I challenge, breathless at his beautiful words, "does that make her a princess?"

"It makes her a queen," he answers huskily, pressing a careful, almost delicate kiss to the tip of my nose. "Or rather, acknowledges her for being one all along, and you, my little wild queen –" he punctuates the words with another kiss, this one slow and soft and nestled between my brows – "are radiant as the sun this evening."

I melt against him, done in by his pretty nonsense and meaningless but heavenly little kisses, and tuck my face into his neck. "Well, it _is_ a yellow dress," I concede with a drowsy sort of contentment. "Bright as a buttercup and about as subtle."

"I rather enjoy you 'not subtle,'" Peeta murmurs, turning about and carrying me toward the fireside. "Don't get me wrong: I love you in greens and grays and browns, all stealth and shadows and enormous silver eyes, but you're stunning in bright colors. A queen in truth."

Still cradling me to him, he crouches down, favoring his prosthesis ever so slightly, to set me at the head of our picnic feast, with the venison ribs and roast chicken to either hand, then seats himself beside me. "What shall I serve you first, my queen?" he asks, his eyes glinting with merriment but still so warm and dark, as though addressing me as his queen is anything but a joke, and I snake out a hand to catch his.

"If you please, sir, there's no goose in this feast," I inform him gravely, toying with his fingers. "Nor gander neither, and this vixen-in-a-ball-gown is woefully disappointed at the absence of her favorite dish."

"Ah," he says with equal gravity, curling his fingers around mine and staring pointedly at the magnificent meal spread before us. "As to that: there is no gander _in_ the feast, true enough, but there is a gander _at_ the feast – a plump and wholesome one – should…should you prefer him to the main courses provided."

I gaze between our hands and his averted face and wonder why my breath is speeding up – and why this dialogue suddenly doesn't feel silly in the least. "I-I think I've taken more than my share of nips today," I stammer, tracing a tendon on the back of his hand with my thumb. "If…if I want this gander to last till spring, I need to give him a few days' respite to regrow some feathers."

Peeta's hand trembles in my hold. "He's a mighty plump gander, vixen mine," he says raggedly, still persistently evading my eyes. "I daresay you could take another nip or two without jeopardizing your winter store."

Trembling myself now, I take his hand in both of mine and turn it gently palm-up, then raise his palm to my mouth and press a lingering kiss at its center. It feels foolish and daring all at once, and Peeta's resulting moan kindles the hot ache in my belly in less than a heartbeat. His hand smells almost dizzyingly of lemons, sharp and sweet and golden as midwinter sun, and I want to close my mouth around each strong finger in turn and suck at them like hard candies, till my belly is flooded with the musk and honey of Peeta and lemons –

" _Oh!_ " I cry, mortified at this mad, revolting urge, and drop his hand like a hot pan. "I-I'm so sorry, Peeta."

"For…f-for what?" he asks gently, if a little hoarsely, reaching out to brush my sleeve with his fingers. "I like your nips, little vixen, and would happily take the place of your supper if you wished."

He's teasing now; I can hear it clearly in his voice, and I peer through shame-lowered lashes to meet encouraging – if still unusually dark – eyes. "I-I'm greedy to taste this picnic feast," I tell him, barely a lie at all. "But an after-dinner nip – or-or two – might be a nice treat."

"I look forward to it," he replies with a grin. "Shall I make a half-hearted and fruitless attempt to run away or happily surrender to my captor?"

I return his grin and lean over to take a playful mock-bite at his shoulder, encased now, appropriately enough, in a sweater the downy yellow of a newly hatched chick. I wonder if he chose the garment to correspond with the lemon theme of our meal or perhaps in keeping with my description of him as a golden goose – or maybe Lavinia is more devious than I realized and brought him a sunny garment as well for our winter picnic. "I give you the meal to decide," I declare grandly. "But remember, lonely gander: this vixen has sharp little teeth and is a greedy beast indeed. We may be scarcely past New Year's but this winter has been long and cold already, and a small hungry fox would be hard-pressed not to devour a fat, foolish, golden goose who lingers so willingly in her presence."

"Oh, little vixen," he sighs, a slow exhalation that positively exudes bliss. "Surely you know by now that I am yours to do with as you please?"

I contemplate these words and the sweet boy who uttered them, my head cocked like a curious kit's, then I pick up his arm by the wrist, wriggle into the created hollow beneath, drape the arm around me like a shawl and scoot my hip snugly against his. "Ah, you fierce, greedy thing," he chuckles, planting a kiss on the top of my head. "What's a gander to do when even his wings are in such demand?"

"I like your wings immensely," I inform him, tucking myself as tightly against his warmth as I can. "Maybe I'll save them for last instead of your beak."

"I have an idea, if you're amenable," he says lightly. "It's not quite so cozy, I'm afraid, but I'd rather like to serve you and it's tricky – albeit manageable," he adds quickly, "with one arm otherwise engaged."

I tip my head back against him in sleepy kit-fashion. "I like all of your ideas," I remind him. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

He lowers his arm from around my shoulders and inches a little away from me, but before I can feel too dismayed, he folds his legs around me from behind and scoots close, aligning our torsos front to back as he gathers me to him with all four limbs and fully envelops me in his solid warmth. The change of position is more than satisfactory – enough to melt me against him with pleasure – and then he roots his face into my unbound hair till he reaches the skin of my neck with a plaintive little groan and nestles there, like a burrowing creature at the first snowfall, all quick warm breaths and drowsy coos.

I moan softly and cover his arms with my own, hugging them even tighter about me. " _Oh,_ I'm amenable, Peeta," I sigh. "I don't know how either of us will manage to eat like this, but then, food doesn't seem especially important at the moment."

"A frantic afternoon of turning a case of lemons into a feast fit for a queen and it _doesn't seem_ _especially important_ to you?" Peeta replies in mock-affront, an exquisite grumble of dancing lips and moist breath against the tender skin of my neck, but he doesn't move so much as a hairsbreadth away from me.

I lift his hands and nuzzle my face greedily into the well between them, sighing to my bones at how wonderful those strong callused palms feel against my skin. "I missed you," I confess, as much to myself as to him. "Your arms and your breath and your warmth. I hated leaving our nest to go to work, even if it was on your present."

He strokes my face a little, blindly but so gentle. "I missed you too, little songbird," he murmurs. "Perhaps we should dispense with secret presents altogether. Then neither of us would have to go away ever again."

I consider this prospect for a long delicious moment, my face nestled deep between his hands, but ultimately shake my head. "I like surprising you – and being surprised by you," I admit, "though spending more time together might be nice too."

He chuckles softly. "That's handy indeed, greedy gosling," he replies, "because I've got a project for us to work on after supper – if you want to, of course. If we ever actually _eat_ supper," he adds teasingly, "and decide on something other than cuddling to fill the rest of the evening."

I want to retort with something shocked and reproachful but he's so right that I can't drum up the effort to lie, even in jest. "Well, you _did_ promise me another nest," I point out.

"In exchange for a story, lazy thing," he reminds me, "or a short song, if you're really in a hurry." His lips catch at my neck in a playful admonishing nip, as tender as a kiss, but still it makes me catch my breath, and not because it hurt. All at once I'm overcome by the desire to turn in his embrace, knot my legs around his waist and press against his groin till this acute hunger between my legs is sated, and I hate it. I hate how incredible it felt and how something deep inside me whispers of feeling even _more_ wonderful – more wonderful than I can imagine – if I would dare to continue; to rub and gasp and strain against him till I'm damp and boneless and trembling with pleasure.

I scramble out of his embrace so fast it's a wonder I don't upset every dish on the blanket, but this time I don't simply move away: I stumble to my feet and run to the kitchen, but that doesn't seem far enough so I continue into the dark pantry and tuck myself between two barrels, flushed and miserable and on the brink of furious tears.

Why can't I do this right? Why is my body being so awful, longing and even striving for the most inappropriate things right when Peeta and I have found this wonderful new intimacy of foxes and geese, of cuddles and kisses and stories and songs? What is this terrible, powerful _wanting_ in my belly that's only stoked hotter and fiercer as the day went on, and how can I make it go away?

"Katniss," murmurs a beloved voice. "Katniss, I'm so sorry."

He's in the kitchen, just outside the open pantry door and therefore beyond my line of vision but not encroaching, _never_ encroaching. "I shouldn't have done that," he says quietly. "I-I keep getting carried away with our game, and I'm so sorry for making you uncomfortable. I'll go upstairs and work for the rest of the night, and when you've eaten as much of the supper as you want, just leave the dishes and I'll clean up later."

"But when will _you_ eat?" I croak, a stupid question but the only reply I can force out.

"I'm a plump gander, remember?" he says lightly, forcing a chuckle. "I can skip a feast or two, or take some bread and cheese up to my room – and anyway, I stole plenty of little tastes while I was cooking. You don't need to worry about me getting enough to eat."

"But I _do_ ," I answer miserably. "I worry about you being hungry…or-or sick or sad or cold or hurt or in danger –"

"Oh, sweetheart, I'm none of those things," he assures me, and his voice is closer now, as though he took a step nearer the doorway. "Not now, not in a long time – not since you came to live here. You've done so much for me – more than you could ever imagine – by simply _being_ here," he says softly. "I respect your wildness – I-I _love_ it – and I'm ashamed of myself for…for getting so close and spooking you."

"You don't understand," I lament, driving my hot face against my bent knees and feeling wretched beyond measure that this gentle, patient boy could blame himself in any way for my repeated flights. "Everything you do is perfect: the meals, the baths, the cuddle-nests, all your wonderful presents. It's not you I'm running from," I whisper.

There's a quiet creak and a settling of weight in reply and I realize Peeta sat down on the floor just outside, so patiently – _always_ so patient. "Then what _are_ you running from, Katniss?" he asks softly. "And how can I make it go away? Please tell me, whatever it is, and I'll fix it."

I creep out of my hiding place on hands and knees and crawl over to settle just inside the doorway, still not quite close enough to see him. "It's _me_ that's the problem," I confess. "I-I warned you that I was greedy, sweet boy, and somehow, the more you give me, the more I want."

"I'll give you anything and everything, gladly," he answers, quietly but without hesitation. "You must know that by now."

I shake my head, never mind he can't see it, and give a hopeless moan. _Not this,_ I tell him silently. _Never this._ But I'm a greedy vixen aching with love for an impossibly generous gander, so I do what my entire being is crying out for: I inch out the doorway to where Peeta waits, legs folded in front of him and eyes carefully directed away from the pantry, and sink down to lay my head on his thigh; a wild thing in search of forgiveness.

I whimper at the feel of firm muscle and skin-warmed corduroy beneath my cheek and Peeta answers with a moan, settling a hand on my head and stroking my hair with cautious, trembling fingers. "Oh _Katniss,_ " he whispers, and it almost sounds like he's in pain. "Please, _please_ tell me what you want and I'll give it to you, whatever it is."

I exhale for the first time in what feels like an hour and lean up to press a little kiss to his knee. "This," I murmur, nestling my cheek against his thigh, and it's not a lie, if also not the whole truth. "You."

"Well," he rasps, "here I am."

Before I can think twice about it I climb into his lap, legs draped to one side, and butt my head against his chest, as though I could reach his heart if I were a little more determined. His arms come up to enfold me like it's second nature and I melt against him with a wordless croon.

"This is okay, you know," he says, his voice low and husky. "This and nothing else, for as long as we live, if that's what you want. You don't have to hunt or tan hides or make me anything ever again –"

"But _you_ have to cook and bake or we'll never eat," I point out, without any real force, but Peeta only chuckles and hugs me even closer.

" _Oh_ , my greedy gosling," he sighs rocking me a little, "we've both lived on so little that a diet of fruit and cheese and cold sausage would be a banquet, and Pollux and Lavinia could always bring us hot meals from town – or cook _for_ us, if we were really desperate. They're both respectable cooks, believe it or not, and they'd planned on doing that sort of thing when they first agreed to come and live with me. They'd be more than willing to cook for us if I asked."

I tilt my head, intending to meet his eyes, but he instead he brings his forehead to mine and rubs against me in a nuzzling gesture. "I just want you to be happy, little Katniss," he murmurs. "It's the only thing I want in all the world. Tell me what would make you happy and you'll have it."

I curl my fingers in the yellow down of his sweater. "Goslits and kitlings," I whisper, at once a riddle, the wishing-well prayer of a barren fairytale wife, and the literal cry of my heart. "Twin baby fawns cradled to my breast," I go on, my voice catching in longing and grief. "One golden as the sun and the other silvery as the moon, and…and a snow-white bear cub, just the right size for my arms."

"Is…is that everything?" Peeta asks hoarsely. He stiffened a little when I began the impossible list but this is the first he's spoken or reacted in any way, and it doesn't feel like a scoff or a tease.

I think back to this morning's heartbreakingly perfect dream; of my family's guesses as to the nature of my unborn twins, and add the most impossible wish of all – the one that's been in my mind and heart since the night I agreed to stay here forever. "And the Morning and Evening Star," I say with a broken little laugh, as though I'm back in the Seam, thin and gray and dying of starvation, and asking for sugar and fresh cream for my pine needle tea.

"I've been wondering if they aren't twins as well," he says softly, "or the first- and second-born of the sun and moon: two children instead of one. A silver girl and a golden boy."

I sit up, wide-eyed, to meet Peeta's sweet, sad smile. "I can give you all of that, sweetheart," he murmurs, cupping my cheek in one strong hand. "Tonight, even – this very moment, if you want – but I'd like a little more time to work on some of your wishes, if that's okay."

I shake my head in utter confusion, staring at him like he's lost his mind. "I'll show you what I mean, if you want," he offers. "I…I'd _like_ to show you what I mean, if it would make you happy."

My mind whirls, at once perplexed and euphoric and ever so slightly terrified. Peeta doesn't know how literally I want those impossible babies and he certainly doesn't mean to take me upstairs to his bed of autumn and sunset and plant them inside me, but then what can he possibly mean? How are these wild wishes so unsurprising to him and how can he possibly think he can grant them right now?

"Have supper with me, little sweetheart," he urges, so gently, inching his hand back to cradle and caress my nape, "and afterward I'll grant your first wish."

"Okay," I whisper, and somehow I'm aloft in his arms once more and being carried to the living room as though I weigh no more than the feather he once described me as, but this time I'm cradled like a sleepy child, small and snug and so close to his heart. I feel like I should protest this for some reason, but as I can't seem to think just what that reason is, I burrow into the warm musky down of his sweater and let him carry me back to our picnic.

He places me back where I started, with the chicken and ribs to either side, and I catch at the front of his sweater before he can move away to seat himself. "I've never seen you in yellow before, you who pay attention to the tiniest details," I tease. "Did you wear this to go along with the meal?"

He grins through a delightful blush and plants himself beside me. "More than you know," he replies. "I've had it since the Victory Tour but it made me feel like a fluffy chick, so I haven't worn it since –"

"You feel entirely like a fluffy chick," I concur, stroking his chest with an answering grin. "And tonight?"

"Well, it's sort of lemon-colored," he explains, blushing deeper, "and I thought there was the slightest chance you might sit down for supper and just start grabbing and devouring yellow things –"

"An intriguing course of action and one I haven't entirely ruled out," I warn him playfully, with a wide foxy grin and a meaningful lick of my lips.

"Or if I didn't pass as a lemon dish," he adds quietly, staring down at our meal, "it's downy and somewhat golden and, well…you were hunting for down and a golden goose for the better part of the morning…"

I consider this for a moment. "And you didn't think I'd recognize you without your feathers?" I wonder, but suddenly it doesn't feel like either of us is joking.

Peeta hesitates for a long moment before replying. "Let's just say I wanted to make sure there was a golden goose waiting for a certain hungry little fox when she came looking for her supper," he says.

I don't understand why, but the urge is overwhelming and irresistible, and I lean in to plant a sound kiss on his cheek. "I like you, silly gander," I inform him, "exceedingly," and I rub my face against his downy shoulder for good measure.

Peeta moans softly. "You're welcome to burrow amongst my feathers as long as you like, cold little one," he murmurs, "and then gobble me up when you wake."

I lift my head, recalling this dialogue from earlier – my own words from our breathless fox-and-goose encounter in the cuddle-nest – and shunt myself into the warm niche of his lap and arms with a little hop. "Well, I _am_ surpassing fond of nests," I reply, wriggling into the hollow between his folded legs, "and downy gander-nests most of all."

He kisses the top of my head with a gusty sigh and curls his arms around me. "It's yours, whole and entire, little nestling," he says. "Now what can I serve you for refreshment?"

I gaze at the luxurious picnic spread before us and grin at the obvious reply. "The chicken, of course," I answer merrily. "Unless there's some rule against a gander serving chicken to a fox?"

Peeta chuckles at this. "It sounds like a shrewd course of action, to be honest," he replies: "a good way to save his own skin – and feathers," and he reaches around me for the platter of chicken, which he duly sets on my knees. "Shall I carve for you, my queen?" he teases.

I seize a drumstick with gusto and bite into the plump end, only to give a squeak of delighted surprise. The crisp, tart skin and buttery meat is _cold_ : icebox-cold, not cooled naturally after coming out of the oven. Peeta roasted a chicken for me and chilled it straightaway because he knows how passionately I love cold chicken. To cool it this thoroughly, he would have had to start the chicken before any of the other dishes and then, likelier than not, pop it outside on the porch for an hour or two.

I carefully set the chicken platter back on the picnic blanket and turn in the nest of Peeta's body, bracketing his hips with my bent legs, to face him, drumstick in hand. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to kiss you," I croak, intending to tease but utterly unable to do so. "J-Just once, for the chicken. It-It's a new rule," I stammer. "If you let the fox's chicken get cold you have to pay a forfeit."

Peeta stares at me, wide-eyed and clearly confused, and my heart lurches with dread. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that I love cold chicken and therefore, that this is nothing but a clumsy – and stupid – excuse to kiss him again.

"I've served you rather a lot of cold chicken over the past weeks," he says at last, and his quiet voice trembles. "D-Does this new rule require back payments for previous offenses? Because if so –" His voice breaks. "I-I'd like to request a short extension before you…collect on all those forfeits."

I can't do this. Can't make my sweet boy miserable because of my foolish longing for more kisses. "No," I blurt. "I-I mean: the rule has been retracted. No forfeits required."

He frowns delicately. "But surely," he says, "this is a major offense." He takes the wrist of the hand holding the drumstick and holds it gently aloft. "A perfectly good roast chicken that came piping hot and golden from the oven, and now look at it: cold as ice. My vixen's favorite food, reduced to –"

"I love cold chicken," I blurt. "Even more than warm chicken."

The corners of his mouth twitch; a smile in determined hiding. "I had noticed that," he says lightly. "But you're entitled to change your mind at any –"

"My mind isn't changed," I interrupt miserably. "I love cold chicken a-and this is the best I've ever tasted."

His smile creeps out then, ever so slightly: the first rosy peep of sunrise over the horizon. "Thank you," he says with almost aggravating patience. "I'm so happy you like it."

He doesn't say a word about forfeits or kisses but gazes down at me in contented silence, still with that small sweet smile, while the shame boils and festers in my chest, and after about eight seconds I can't take it anymore. "I didn't mean to make you angry or sad," I explain in a rush, "I-I just…I wanted to kiss you because the chicken is so _good_."

He raises his pale brows as though this thought had never occurred to him. "That would be high praise indeed," he replies. "The very highest – more reward than compliment."

He's teasing me, never mind his smile hasn't broadened into a grin and his eyes are almost somber, and I scowl up at him. "You think that's funny?" I snap. "That I wanted to give you a kiss because I liked something you cooked?"

He bursts out laughing – an undeniable affirmative – and takes my face in his hands. "I think it's _adorable_ ," he says, pecking my nose with a quick, merry kiss, "that you liked one bite of cold lemon chicken so much you made up a completely _different_ excuse to kiss me, and when I tried to tell you how nice that sounded you got angry – only you're nestled in my lap and brandishing a drumstick. Which is plenty fearsome, don't get me wrong, but…"

He trails off, laughing even harder, and I shove my upper body against his, intending to tackle him backwards in consternation, but he's too strong and entirely too prepared and he simply catches me to him and hugs me as tightly as he can. " _Oh_ , little Katniss," he sighs through his laughter, "my furious little vixen: you can kiss me anytime you feel like it. No excuses or forfeits necessary."

"I don't want to kiss you anymore," I inform him, with as much cold dignity as I can manage with my face mashed into a chick-down sweater and the solid chest and warm boy-musk beneath. "I think I shan't ever want to kiss you again."

"You're a terrible liar, Katniss," he laughs, but without mocking of any kind – as though this lie about not wanting to kiss him is genuinely amusing – and kisses the top of my head to punctuate it. "I found your jar of little kisses-in-keeping – with a lid not nearly snug enough, I might add – and I strongly suspect that, in response to your cold lemon chicken, you'd like nothing better than to pounce on my chest and peck my face with happy kisses."

"You have a very high opinion of your stupid cold chicken," I answer dryly, still muffled by his chest. "It's barely worth one little kiss, let alone a faceful."

"Well, there's plenty of other food on the blanket," he says lightly. "Maybe one of those dishes would be worth a kiss?"

He sounds so abruptly downcast that I lean back in his loosened embrace to meet his eyes, and they're even sadder than I'd imagined. He looks ashamed and heartbroken all at once, and it can't simply be because I insulted his roast chicken, though that seems like a good place to start making amends.

"Your chicken isn't stupid, sweet boy," I placate, brushing the tip of my nose against his. "That was a terrible thing for me to say. It's the most delicious chicken I've ever tasted, and all your chicken is incredible, so that's pretty high praise, in my opinion."

"And you don't have to kiss me, now or ever," he croaks. "Not for cold chicken or…or any other reason."

But this kiss is painfully overdue and welling up in my chest, and so I lean in and press my mouth against his with a throaty croon. This time his lips soften under mine and even part slightly in a little gasp, and it feels so exquisitely _good_ that I linger and sink against his mouth, drinking in his breath and his warmth and the delicious closeness of his sweet face; so close I can almost feel his endless golden eyelashes against my cheek.

I wonder wildly how it would feel if he were kissing me in return and nudge his soft, still mouth like an impatient kit, desperate for some kind of response, only to duck away immediately with a mortified little whimper.

"Shh, what's this?" Peeta wonders, catching my face in his hands, and his eyes are so dark that meeting them makes me a little dizzy. "I said you didn't have to kiss me and now it's made you sad."

I shake my head helplessly against his hands. "I _like_ kissing you," I whisper, and he looks at me like I've just handed him the moon.

"You're free to do so whenever you want – or not," he reminds me, so gently. "Why are you sad, sweetheart?"

I can't say it. Not sitting in his lap at the fireside, with my face cradled in his strong hands and his priceless lemon feast spread like a picnic behind me – to say nothing of the cold drumstick still in my hand.

"Because I want a kiss too," I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut and longing to bury my head beneath the picnic blanket at the sharp catch of his breath. "I-I know I haven't done anything to earn one, b-but…I thought it might be nice…"

I've finally asked for something he can't and won't give me; finally proven myself to be even greedier than either of us could have guessed. This boy has wrapped me in luxury and comfort, even adoration, and I had the gall to tell him I wanted something even more precious: one of the priceless kisses he's storing up for his bride.

I wonder if he'll send me back to my family or maybe just toss me out into the snow. I've heard old tales like that, where a girl goes from poverty to a palace and, through curiosity or greed, asks for the one thing that's been forbidden her, which sends her right back to where she started, only worse, because now she's experienced all those wonderful things and knows that it was her own folly that lost them forever.

"I-I said you could kiss me whenever you want," Peeta says woodenly. He's gone stock-still everywhere our bodies are touching except for his hands, which tremble a little against my cheeks.

He doesn't understand. He thinks I just want to kiss him again, and we've gone too far for me not to clarify my unthinkable request.

I open my eyes to shamed slits to find him staring at me with a wide-eyed, almost hunted look, and my miserable heart sinks. "Please let me go upstairs," I beg him. "It was terrible of me to ask for something so precious. I-I'll stay up there for the rest of the night, or the week, or for good if you want –"

"Because…you wanted a kiss?" he puzzles, his sweet voice a halting rasp.

"Because I wanted a kiss from _you_ ," I explain, certain my cheeks must be scalding his palms and feeling like an idiot for having to spell it out, as though I asked wrong or clumsily. " _Please_ forget I asked, or if you can't, just let me go upstairs for a little bit."

"Because you wanted me to kiss you?" he wonders, barely a whisper.

I wonder if he's being deliberately obtuse but there's nothing in his face to suggest it. He looks stunned and wary and genuinely uncertain, even after I laid out my request as plain as day. "Yes," I answer hopelessly. "Because I wanted you to kiss me."

His thumb inches cautiously to the corner of my mouth and traces an unsteady outline of my lips. "You…you're _sure_ , Katniss?" he says, his eyes, so somber and concerned, flitting up to meet mine. "You…you want me to kiss you? It would make you happy?"

I give a tiny, breathless nod over the wild clamoring of my heart. "If…if it doesn't hurt or upset or…or offend you," I reply, "then yes, it would make me happy."

He tips my chin as carefully as if I were made of new-fallen snow and leans in to bring his mouth to mine. It's a gentle, breathless kiss with almost no pressure behind it, as though he's afraid I'll bolt or maybe crumble at the touch, but it's more than sufficient to detonate something hot and heady as spiced wine deep inside me; something sweet and warm and welling and _wonderful_ , like honey and sunlight and molten gold, flooding my heart and my belly and the place behind my eyes all at once.

It's all I can do not to lunge against his mouth and kiss him, devour him, gobble him up; my fierce little mouth clambering desperately for more of him – _all_ of him – and I can't hold back a whimper as he leans back again, as slowly and carefully as he leaned in, taking away his sweet, soft mouth and with it all that glorious honey and gold that can never, _ever_ be mine.

He exhales raggedly against my lips, almost a sob, and I open my eyes to find tears in his. "Oh, sweet boy," I breathe, because of course he's shamed and angry that I've connived him out of one of the most precious things he's storing up for his beloved, but he shakes his head before I can say anything more and gathers me to him in an almost crushing embrace.

"No apologies," he whispers fiercely against my crown, his pulse fluttering and stumbling and racing beneath my cheek like the heart of a caught thing that has been waiting long years for the hands of its captor. "Not this time, Katniss. Not for this."

"But you're _crying_ –" I attempt, but he only shakes his head against mine and hugs me tighter.

"Tears can mean a myriad of things," he murmurs, rocking me gently from side to side. "These are the good ones, sweetling – the very _best._ "

I don't understand this in the least, but I release the resistance in my upper body and surrender to his embrace with a sigh. Peeta acknowledges this with a groan and lifts me against him, just enough to ease his thighs under my backside, and I hitch forward gratefully, hooking my calves behind him and sinking onto his groin.

Somehow it feels even better this time. The heat and dampness between my legs are both present and apparent, as is the mysterious hard nub at the center of him that I nestle over as deeply as my skirts will allow, and the sheer bliss of the contact is almost dizzying, but there's an unexpected comfort in it as well. Something good and warm and full and _right_ , as though Peeta and I were created as one being, knit together at this secret place, and this position is something like a reunion.

I burrow my free hand under his sweater to encounter, with a grunt of disconcertion, a thin undershirt, which I impatiently tug free of his waistband to root beneath, my fingers as voracious for warm tender skin as winter mousekins in a grain store, and Peeta gasps and laughs all at once. "That might be easier, greedy thing," he pants, "if you weren't holding a drumstick."

I lift my right hand behind Peeta's back to find the fingers still stubbornly clinging to the bone end of the chicken leg that caused all this trouble, and the sight of it provides some much-needed calm and clarification in the heightened emotions of the moment. "Food," I fumble out through limp lips, as though it's one of Granny Ashpet's father's foreign fairy words. "We should eat before your cold chicken warms up and any warm things get cold."

Peeta exhales against my neck in a hot whuff that feels both amused and disgruntled. "I'd hate for my hard work to go to waste," he agrees, "and we can't exactly eat like this," but his arms don't ease in any measure in their powerful hold about my torso.

I grin and peck the side of his head with a kiss. "We can split a chicken leg," I remind him, guiding it between our faces, and he laughs so hard his entire body shakes.

"That one's yours, little foxling, whole and entire," he assures me. "I shudder to think what would happen if I dared to take a bite."

I nip his nose with a happy bark. "I like gander beak best of all," I concede, "but cold roast lemon chicken is more than enough to stall me – at least till after supper."

"And then comes the gobbling-up?" he asks hopefully, not unlike a wheedling child, and I laugh in reply.

"Then comes the _nibbling,_ gooseling mine," I tell him with playful patience. "Who knows how long this winter will last, and I don't want to finish off the plumpest, richest bird in my pantry before the month is up."

"Oh Katniss, you finished me off a long time ago," he sighs, "but you're right: a little temperance in the pantry in the dead of winter surely wouldn't go amiss."

We untangle with countless little sounds of reluctance and I plant myself alongside him on the floor, feeling flushed and somehow emptier between my legs than ever. The absence of Peeta's solid warmth fitted so perfectly into my hollow places makes me shiver, despite the crackling hearth at my back.

"Are you cold, sweetling?" he asks and gets up to fetch a blanket before I can refuse. Of course, I can't tell him that this isn't the heat I'm looking for – that I _need_ – and he drapes the warmed wool about me with such tenderness and concern that it goes a long way toward making up the difference.

"Stay by the fire and I'll serve you," he says, and adds with a grin, "That was my plan all along anyway."

I shake my head at my sweet boy's indomitable determination to treat me like a queen but can't hold back an answering smile. "I want to taste everything," I warn. "So, little bites to start."

He laughs merrily. " 'Little bites,' after all your hard work today? I saw you bite into that drumstick," he reminds me. "So it's moderate bites at the very least."

I have no objection whatsoever to this plan and look on with delight as he fills a plate with at least two bites worth of everything in sight – including, with a broad wink, a chicken wing. "I know the breast meat is the best, but I'm afraid if I give you that first you'll be devouring it by the fistful," he says, laying the plate in my blanket-draped lap. "And as much as I would enjoy the sight of that, I was hoping to save a little to make sandwiches for your lunches."

"I'd be very indignant indeed if you didn't have a good reason," I reply, but his mix of playfulness and very astute observation is melting me to the bone.

I heartily polish off the drumstick while Peeta pours me a glass from one pitcher and a mug from the other. "This is lemonade," he explains, almost reverently, as he hands me the glass. "The hot one is more of what I left for you in the mudroom. It's a honey-lemon drink Grandma Lydda made sometimes when we were sick, only I dressed it up with extra honey and spices to create a sort of lemon cider. It was always so comforting, even when all you had was a chill, but if it's too medicinal – or-or _strange_ –"

"It's _wonderful,_ " I assure him, setting down my chicken bone to take the mug handle, and wash down the buttery dark meat with a generous mouthful of tangy spiced warmth from one hand then the lemonade from the other, which is brow-ticklingly tart and tastes like winter sunlight: sweet and cold and blindingly bright.

I tell Peeta as much and he blushes with pleasure. "I know it's more of a summer drink," he says, "but I so wanted you to try it now."

"It's _perfect_ now," I assure him. "I can't imagine waiting till summer to drink it."

"It's nice and cooling in hot weather," he explains, "but I'll make it for you whenever you like. Any time or season."

I inevitably seize the sweet bun next and Peeta quickly ladles out a small bowl of soup to sneak into my free hand. "This, I _truly_ hope you love," he says. "I tasted it on the Victory Tour and instantly thought of it as 'sunshine soup.'"

I set down the bun to bring a spoonful of the grainy yellow liquid to my mouth and moan as it spills across my tongue. Whatever this is – lentils, maybe? – is tart and sweet and savory and spicy all at once, and I abandon the spoon to lift the bowl to my lips and fill my mouth with this impossible liquid gold.

Sunshine soup indeed.

There's rice in here too, tender grains to give the soup more body, plus little bits of onion and even chicken, and after about four greedy gulps the bowl is drained and I'm wiping it clean with the sweet bun, making blissful little noises all the while at the vibrant bursts of lemon baked right into the dough.

"That's lemon zest, by the way," Peeta remarks and I look up in mortification, my mouth crammed with delicious bites of soup-sweepings and zest-bread, to find him grinning like he's just been handed everything he's ever dreamed of. "Grated lemon peel," he explains. "And that's really just lentil soup made with a hearty portion of lemon and about a dozen spices – including nutmeg, by the way."

I bolt down the current mouthful to tease, "Is that how it's usually made or was that your own invention?"

"It's the traditional recipe, they tell me, though I was only too glad to embrace it," he replies, his grin wider still at the question. "I had to try it out as soon as I got home and I've been waiting for a special occasion to make it again."

"There's snow on the ground," I tell him firmly. "That should be the only 'occasion' required."

He laughs delightedly. "I used every last lemon from the crate making this," he replies, sweeping a hand over the picnic. "They're powerful but tiny, so some of these dishes took a lot, but I'll send for more straightaway if you want."

"You'd better tack it onto your usual order or you'll never get Pollux to go," I say without thinking and instantly flush to the roots of my hair.

Peeta narrows his brows in a thoughtful frown. "Lavinia brought them," he recalls, "which struck me as odd, but not unheard-of. I know she took your skis instead of the sleigh and when she brought in the case she was in more of a hurry than usual, but I figured I'd hear the story eventually. Do you know something about it?"

I flush hotter still and focus entirely on my plate. "I-I know Pollux didn't feel like, erm, getting out of bed today," I mumble. "He, um…he was sulking when I saw him this morning so Lavinia went to town for him."

"And that's worth blushing over?" he says curiously, not quite teasing.

"Well, Lavinia came home eventually," I retort, as though this explains everything, and look up at him pointedly, willing him to comprehend so I don't have to say it.

"And she – _ah,_ " he says, with a perception I could kiss him for. "Went back to bed. You, um…heard?"

I shake my head miserably and his brows fly to his hairline.

"They're usually so discreet," he puzzles. "I'll talk to them tomorrow –"

"No!" I blurt. "Please don't. It…wasn't their fault."

His bright eyes fix on me like a raptor's on a rabbit, albeit significantly more gentle, and I'd rather die than say it but somehow I know he'll find out anyway. "I…I followed them," I choke out. "I don't know why."

His gaze softens and something deep inside me relaxes in response. "First of all, you're not the only one who's seen them," he says quietly. "I wasn't, erm, _looking_ as such, and they had an unguarded moment – _moments_ ," he adds with a fiery blush of his own. "It was before you came here and we were all mortified, especially the, erm, second time."

I recall Lavinia explaining that Peeta had witnessed "an even more intimate moment" than I did and realize that he must have seen them in the act itself. "Oh!" I squeak.

"And, um…" he says after a moment, his eyes very deliberately on the picnic blanket, "it's…difficult not to look, no matter how badly you don't want to."

"Is it?" I croak.

"Especially, um…when it's so foreign," he says slowly, almost as though he's sounding out the words. "I, um… My parents never…I don't think at all after I was born, to tell the truth, and I don't… I've never –" He bites his lips together for a long moment, still looking everywhere but at me. "It's strange and…you're curious," he says at last. "Captivated, even…especially if it's something you've never really seen or heard or…or done."

Something irrationally wild and joyous stirs to life in my heart, something like exhilaration and hope and relief at the thought that Peeta might be even half as lost and innocent as I am. "But…you've been to the Capitol," I say stupidly.

"And I love someone here," he answers hotly, finally raising his eyes to mine, and they're blazing with an anger as bright and fierce as lightning. "I'm not interested in anything the Capitol has to offer and _especially_ not in that line."

My breath stills in a gasp. What he's said isn't rebellious as such but smacks of it, especially in a Victor who's been fêted by the Capitol these past six months – whose nearly every belonging was purchased with their money. As a result of his unthinkable ordeal in the arena, yes, but it's no less their money for being "earned" in such a cruel fashion.

Peeta senses it too then, or maybe acknowledges it, because he gives a deliberate, albeit convincing, sigh and adds, more gently, "I'm not interested in _anyone_ else, Katniss, and never have been. Not in Twelve, not in the Capitol; not anywhere."

"Was Larkspur really your first kiss?" I whisper, and he gapes at me in reply, disbelieving and almost hurt.

"Why would I lie about that?" he asks. "Of course she was. I never thought twice about giving her that last request, but…but I did wonder later if my sweetheart… If it would matter to her at all," he says quietly.

"I think it mattered to her a great deal," I venture, "that you would give something so precious to a dying girl who wanted so little." I think of beautiful Columbine Wilhearn, who's had at least a boyfriend or two that I can recall and more kisses than I can count, and add carefully, "Anyway, she's probably kissed a few boys already, so she surely wouldn't mind that –"

"Has she?" he wonders, looking at me strangely. "I have…reason to believe she's rather new to kissing herself."

"Columbine?" I blurt, suddenly furious on his behalf. "She's walked out with boys from both sides of town and –"

"Columbine?" he echoes, bewildered and possibly, _almost_ , ever so slightly amused. "Columbine Wilhearn? I think she gave Luka a sweetheart ribbon once, which of course drove Mom crazy, but he's after someone else entirely."

It's my turn to gape. "But…but…she's your sweetheart," I puzzle. "Isn't she?"

"Of course not," he replies, so matter-of-factly, despite his escalating amusement, that it can't be anything but the truth.

"But she's a beautiful Seam girl who was named for a white flower!" I sputter, because all my careful deduction can't have been wrong, and Peeta's merriment fades in an instant.

"You've been thinking about this," he says softly. "Does it matter so much to you, who my sweetheart is?"

"Of course it does," I snap, "because I'll have to share a home with her for the rest of my life and take care of her and all the babies that come along and…and you deserve so _much_ ," I confess, the true heart of my objections. "Someone who adores you; every last bit of you. Someone to whom you're not just a new pair of lips and a lifetime of luxury."

"That sounds so wonderful," he whispers, and I reach over to take his hand in both of mine.

"You deserve that and more, Peeta – _so_ much more – and you'll have it," I swear. "I won't let any girl near you who won't cherish you to the roots of your hair and the tips of your toes – th-the five you have and the five you lost," I choke out, because he needs to understand that any girl who truly loves him has to both grieve the loss of his leg and treasure what remains of it, and I bring his hand to my lips to punctuate the thought.

"Are you my little dragon now?" he says huskily, bringing his free hand to my hair. "Will you keep me in a tower and repel all the unworthy maidens with your fiery breath?"

"Don't make fun of me," I scowl. "It's not a laughing matter."

He leans in to press a quick, sound kiss to my forehead. "I'm not, and I agree," he assures me with only the faintest glimmer of a smile, but it's a happy expression, not an amused one. "I _want_ to be cherished, Katniss," he says, his voice breaking, "but that's hardly something you can ask of a girl, let alone expect."

"You shouldn't have to ask, and if you do, she's the wrong girl," I counter firmly. "Your sweetheart should love you without measure and without thought; maybe even without hope," I add, thinking of my father's years of devotion to my oblivious mother. "If she's worthy of you, she would love you long before she knew that you loved her. To be loved by you would be unexpected and overwhelming to such a girl."

" _She was nothing to him, so far as she knew, yet he had somehow become precious to her in ways she couldn't begin to comprehend,_ " he murmurs, and I recall the words from my story of his sweetheart – my carefully veiled confession – this morning on the sofa. "Do you really think she might feel that way for me?" he asks quietly. "Not now, of course, but in time?"

"I would rather she felt that way for you now, and for a long time already," I reply, my heart aching for my boy, who can't bring himself to truly hope that his beloved could love him of her own accord. "But I suppose some hearts are slow to open and slower still to realize they've let someone in to take root and blossom."

"What if I let you choose my bride?" he asks, and his voice is both gentle and wholly serious. "Would that bring you some comfort, my little dragon?"

I drop his hand with a frown. "You've already chosen her," I reply. "This house and everything in it; the bridal nest of your dreams –"

"And you'll know before I ask her," he reminds me, catching my right hand before I can snatch it away entirely and enfolding it between both of his. "I told you that last night. When the time comes I'll tell you who I love and you can decide whether or not she meets your standards."

"And if she doesn't, you'll give her up, just like that?" I ask, flattered and flustered and even a little furious at the thought. "You'd forget – and forsake – the girl you've loved all your life just because I don't like her?"

"Well, I would hope it was more a matter of her not loving me than you not liking her," he says, with just a shadow of a smile playing about his lips. "But if she doesn't cherish me the way you think I deserve and you don't believe she ever could, then I wouldn't pursue her any further. It wouldn't be kind or fair to either of us."

I consider this for a long moment, gazing down at our joined hands. "If…if you don't marry her," I ask hesitantly, "would you look for someone else? Would you send me to town in search of a girl who cherishes you like you deserve?"

"There _is_ no one else, Katniss, and never will be," he answers with a sad smile, raising my hand to press a little kiss against my curled fingers. "So sending you to town in search of a new sweetheart would be pointless and, I think, painful for both of us to bear."

I tip my head in curious kit-fashion and Peeta laughs in reply. "Put your plate down and get over here, little fox," he says, and pulls me into a deep hug in the nest of his lap as soon as I've obliged.

"I couldn't bear this house without you, little sweetheart," he murmurs against my hair, rocking me with his body. "Not even for a few days. And I have a hard time imagining anything you'd enjoy less than searching the district for a bride for me."

I consider the nastiest stages of gutting, skinning, and butchering – and realize he's entirely right. "But I'll do it if you want," I insist, nuzzling him with the side of my head. "I'll do whatever you ask me, sweet boy."

He groans softly and hugs me a little tighter. "Oh little Katniss, I would never," he soothes. "I'd never ask you to do anything you didn't want to. And if my sweetheart doesn't love me – not the way you think I deserve – I'd rather things stay as they are now," he says. "Just you and me in our woodland nest, our days a pattern of shared meals and fireside tales and the exchange of little gifts."

 _And kisses?_ I wonder silently, even as his words kindle my heart to euphoric flame. _Kisses and cuddle-nests and the treasure-trove of warm skin beneath wool and corduroy?_ "What about children, Peeta?" I ask gently. "Blue-eyed sparrow girls with skinny black braids and chubby dumpling-boys with golden curls and silver eyes – and everything that goes into creating them? A wife to share your bed and –"

I break off at a sharp hopeless sound from Peeta's throat, a cry of longing and despair all at once, and I'm sure he's about to shove me away but he only holds me tighter as he whispers, "Oh Katniss, _of course_ I want those things, so badly my heart aches just to think of them, but I don't want them with anyone else. If my sweetheart doesn't love me, I'll live without children and…and physical love, and gladly."

I resolve in this moment that if Peeta can't marry his sweetheart, whether by her decision or my own, I'll offer myself to fill that void: a warm woman's body to hold in the darkness, with hands and lips to explore his own wounded landscape, so tenderly – and a womb to seed. I'm not the girl he loves but I can still give him daughters with black hair and blue eyes, as well as everything that goes into creating them, and maybe after a few lonely years he'll crave the simple comfort of it: of bare skin and breasts and babes rounding a dove-brown belly. This sweet, wealthy boy is aching for what waits beneath the soot-stained coverlets of even the poorest miners, and it's unthinkable that he might die without ever experiencing the quiet pleasures any Seam husband can take for granted, especially as he's sharing his home with a Seam girl who loves him with every fiber of her being. I'll love him forever regardless, but how much better to put that love to use in a manner my boy might desperately need someday?

"You won't," I promise him cryptically. "You won't go without ever again, Peeta, let alone without something so precious. I'll make sure of that."

He kisses the top of my head with an uneven chuckle. "I'm worried and hopeful all at once," he tells me. "Did you just promise me my sweetheart?"

I consider my answer carefully. Can I bear my sweetheart making love with another Seam girl beneath this roof we share or watching his face as her belly swells like a round golden moon? I know more of lovemaking than I did this morning; can I bear the thought of this sweet, soft mouth engulfing another girl's dark-budded breast or this beloved face sinking between her dusky legs with a moan?

These images turn my stomach but I love this gentle boy far too much not to give him what he wants, or try for it with all my might, even if it breaks my heart, and so I tell him, "Yes. If it's within my power to bring your sweetheart to your arms…a-and your bed, I'll do it – and gladly."

 _And if not,_ I swear silently, _I'll give you another Seam girl, something like the one you love, who carries more love for you than your sweetheart ever could. I'll kiss the grief from every inch of your body and lie beneath you as you pour your loneliness into me, and I'll carry your children like a treasure._

"Oh Katniss," he whispers. "You can't begin to imagine what that means to me."

He tips me back against one arm to bring us face-to-face, and the sight of his swollen pupils sparks an echoing curl in my belly that tingles all the way down to my damp secret place. I could hike my skirt to my waist and be atop his groin in two heartbeats, or bring his free hand up to enclose one little breast, or tug this silly chick-down sweater – and the even sillier undershirt besides – up over his golden head and feast on the expanse of warm skin that lies beneath – which leaves me no choice but to scramble out of his lap like the spooked wild thing he described me as just minutes ago.

I don't go far, though – I think I'd burst if I did – and settle so close beside him that our hips brush, to his evident delight. "What's this?" he wonders with a smile that could outshine the sun. "A tiny brave kit has deigned to sit beside me."

"Because said kit wants a gosling for dessert," I answer smartly, only half-teasing. "Roast chicken washes down best with a mouthful of yellow feathers," I explain, and take a mock nip at the firm cap of his shoulder to punctuate it.

"I _knew_ there would be gobbling-up!" he says gleefully. "Finish your dinner, greedy thing, before you run out of room for dessert."

"I'll always have room for dessert," I assure him, "provided said dessert has yellow feathers and a beak that never shuts," and I tilt my head to peck his mouth. "Now let's get you some supper," I tell him, picking up the second plate and laying the full slab of venison ribs across it. "You're looking a little lean, gander mine."

Peeta laughs so hard his shoulders shake and holds up his hands before I can fit the plate edges into them. "Where, exactly, voracious thing," he wonders, "have I lost _this_ much weight?"

I tip my head in contemplation. Peeta is _gloriously_ solid – broad and firm, not fleshy in the least – both to the eye and to the touch, and I'm sorely tempted to snake a hand under the front of his sweater to see whether his belly is soft or taut with muscle.

My eyes trail down his legs which, if memory serves, are solid as young oaks beneath their corduroy confines, except for – " _Aha!_ " I crow, pointing at his right shin. "That decoy leg of yours! You're missing a good three pounds of protein there, and you need to add it back somewhere. You can't shortchange a hungry vixen on her winter feast and not expect her to notice," I inform him, and deposit the plate of ribs squarely over his lap.

I worry for a half-second that I've taken my teasing too far but Peeta is grinning from ear to ear, though he somehow manages to impose mock-shamed eyes over the expression. "That was my grand escape plan," he says ruefully. "I thought I could give you my prosthesis to nibble on every day, like Hansel in the candy-witch's cage, and when you finally had to take it out to the workshop to 'carve' it – because I know you'd never give up on a log of metal and plastic if you thought there was a hearty meal locked away inside –" he winks at that – "I'd make a break for it in the woods."

I clutch a hand to my heart in mock-theatrics. "You wound me, deceitful bird," I chide. "And here I thought you were looking forward to a winter in the pantry with daily vixen-nips and stolen pinches of down."

"I'm _particularly_ looking forward to the vixen-nips," he replies merrily. "I plotted my escape before I knew just how pleasant those nips could be."

"There will be no more nips for you, wicked bird," I declare, as sternly as I can muster. "You're all pretend-down and hollow legs, not worth the space in my storeroom –"

"Oh, get over here," he says with exasperated affection, and I'm not sure where the ribs disappear to but suddenly I'm back in Peeta's lap, where he takes both my hands by the wrists and presses the palms to his chest. "This down, admittedly, is counterfeit, as I've yet to sprout my own breastful," he explains. "But this –" he brings my hands to his head and curls them into deep fistfuls of hair – "is rooted and entirely real, and if you nose around a bit you'll find more beneath my shirt and trousers – where, I need hardly add, you will also find only one _half_ of one limb to be artificial."

I imagine rooting inside Peeta's clothes for more golden hairs sprouting from firm, warm flesh and I smile, slow and wolfishly. "Very well," I reply, "I shall suspend my misgivings, but only until such time as a thorough inventory of your parts can be conducted and catalogued. And if I find you to be featherless and skinny as a rail," I warn, "I'm going to put you in the empty stall beside Rye and feed you nothing but chocolate, roast chicken, and cream till you plump into a worthy winter meal."

"As lovely as that sounds," he says huskily, leaning in to brush noses with me, "I'm far too stocky to merit a winter of fattening up – but you're welcome to inventory me at your leisure just the same."

I tug his head down to nip at one blond eyebrow. "One," I count aloud happily. "I'm pleased to note that you have another of these, gander mine, and a more than acceptable complement of lash-down."

That blond brow, and its fellow, raise in something halfway between surprise and amusement. "Vixen mine," Peeta wonders, "are you admiring my _eyelashes_?"

The blush ensues before I can even think about fighting it and I'm in Peeta's lap to boot, so there's no way to evade his gaze. "Well, they're _endless_!" I grumble in my defense. "I watch you blink sometimes, just to see if they get tangled up."

"Spoken like a true huntress," he teases, but he looks fit to burst with pleasure. "And I suppose when my lashes tangled together I would promptly lose my footing and topple over – straight into the barrow you had lying in wait, and off you'd wheel me to your pantry, blind and bewildered and entirely at the mercy of your greedy little mouth?"

"Something like that," I admit, and Peeta seizes my face and kisses me, quick and hard and square on the lips.

" _Oh,_ little Katniss," he sighs. "I adore you beyond measure."

He draws back with a sudden start, his eyes wide and worried, but I pull him back in and press my forehead against his before he can speak. "Don't you dare," I growl, but softly; a cougar admonishing her cub or her mate. "I like gander-nips every bit as much as I enjoy nipping ganders – maybe even more."

He rolls his brow against me in reply and I feel him smile. "I'm glad," he murmurs, a little hoarsely. "Because this beak is surpassing fond of fresh vixen and I can't begin to guess when it'll snake out for another bite."

I ache exquisitely at his words, my belly, breasts, and the secret place between my legs all warm and heavy and crying out for the corresponding part of Peeta to touch or cradle or fill their emptiness with honey and gold. Why does the mere _anticipation_ of his mouth, all teasing nibbles and fleeting, friendly kisses, affect me like this? Is it simply because I've witnessed some very intimate applications of a lover's mouth and can't seem to stop envisioning myself on the receiving end of such acts?

But kissing Peeta is safer, somehow – a wild thing's gesture, not a woman's in love – and so I turn my head, rubbing my cheek against his, to catch his earlobe between my lips. He gasps but I barely hear it, enthralled by I am by this curious new object to explore and devour in turns, and I trace the curve with the tip of my tongue, making him tremble.

I've buried my face in his neck a hundred times; why did I never once raise my face a matter of inches to this delightful fleshy spiral? There's nothing intimate about ears, after all, and I love the feel of Peeta's beneath my mouth, supple and tender and a little downy at the top. I worry the lobe between my lips and give it a tug, as I've seen kits and cubs do to their siblings and mothers at playtime, and tuck it back into place with a wet kiss, then I methodically kiss my way over temples, eyes, and that delicious sweet spot of nose bridge to reach his other ear. "Oh, sweet boy," I sigh, teasing the lobe with my nose before claiming it with my mouth, to an exhilarating groan from Peeta's throat. "Can't I have you instead of supper?"

He shudders deeply, taking several moments and ragged shallow breaths to reply. "I should say not," he answers hoarsely, as though he's trying to tease but can't quite manage it. "After all my hard work, and those lemons weren't cheap – but I really can't deny you anything," he finishes in a heavy rush of breath and sags a little against me, bringing his ear flush against my mouth. "I-I'll wrap all this up and we can –"

"No!" I protest, with surprising force for having just been given exactly what I want, and push back to meet his eyes, which are half-closed and almost drowsy, as though he's imbibed half a gallon of spiced wine all on his own, and his cheeks are flushed to boot. "I-I mean: I need sustenance after a long day's work," I explain, "and after two bites of yellow bird, I'm liable to gobble up the whole thing when it – you – really need to last me the whole winter…"

He exhales, slow and shakily, and gives me a look that feels at once miserable and grateful. "Your restraint is much appreciated, greedy vixen," he replies. "What can I tide you over with in the meantime? More chicken in place of your goose?" he suggests. "Or would you prefer something heartier, like ribs?"

I finally spy the ribs then, a long arm's reach from his right hip, and narrow my eyes thoughtfully. I hadn't processed it earlier but there's only one place he could have found fresh venison ribs without leaving the house – the parcel I made for his sweetheart, which mysteriously found its way back here – and I can't not address that, especially since I very nearly ruined everything, trying to accelerate his slow and careful courtship.

"About those ribs," I begin weakly, fixing my eyes on the plate, and Peeta snags my attention with a quick, tiny kiss to my cheekbone.

"Pollux delivered them, you know," he says lightly, "right where you told him. Why would you send the choicest portions of the first deer you brought down all by yourself to a girl I strongly suspect you can't stand?"

My cheeks burn. "Because you love her," I whisper, "and if you'd carved the deer, you would have given her the very best portions."

He shakes his head slowly, but not in disagreement. "Oh Katniss," he murmurs. "You never cease to amaze me."

Since it's become painfully apparent that any attempt to separate our bodies will only result in them snapping back together and entangling even tighter than before, we resort to heaping two plates full and finishing the meal with me snugged in the burrow of Peeta's legs, cycling in the full plate when the first is empty and alternately snatching covert bites and feeding them to each other. It feels so unbelievably _good_ to share a meal in this fashion that I refuse to think about ever eating in a chair at the table again. The lump at Peeta's groin is hard as a rock against my backside when I first wriggle into place and he winces audibly as I scoot as close as his body will allow, but he neither protests nor relocates me, and as the meal progresses the lump softens; not entirely, but back to the comfortable firmness I've grown accustomed to, and it doesn't seem to pain him as much to have me pressed against it.

I don't understand it at all, but as I no longer feel quite so desperate to straddle his groin and rub my secret place against it, I really can't complain.

I even manage to steal tastes of Peeta's fingers, periodically closing my mouth around more than the bite of bread or chicken or tart that he's offering – both of us having long abandoned forks and spoons except for loose or liquid dishes – and tugging his fingertip into my mouth with a quick, daring suck that sends a tingling surge down between my breasts to pool warmly at my groin and evokes an echoing twitch from his own; a nudge of the lump between his legs and something halfway between a gasp and a grunt from his throat.

A sound, I realize, that I enjoy more than I would have thought possible.

It feels decadent and almost wicked, like drinking a bottle of cream when milk is available, and after a few covert suckles Peeta finally protests. "I thought you were going to save me for later, greedy gosling," he chides breathlessly. "I need these fingers for your after-supper surprise."

"There's an after-supper surprise?" I chirp, tipping my head back to gaze up at him. "In addition to the cuddle-nest or in place of?"

He laughs heartily. "In addition, greedy thing, but you have to give me a story or a song to get the cuddle-nest. The surprise comes free of charge."

I squeal with delight and dive back into our plate with gusto. "What if I give you both?" I ask through a mouthful of lemon cake and tangy wild rice. "A story _and_ a song – can I have an extra treat?"

He dips his face into the curve of my neck, leaving a damp and sticky kiss behind. "You can have whatever you want," he replies, quite seriously. "Money, jewels, an extra dessert prepared on command, half my kingdom and a throne to rule it from…"

I grin, never mind he can't see it, and think of songs and stories and wishes. Granny Ashpet's father left us one additional song; another silly children's piece, sung to his daughter from birth, the lyrics to which are particularly appropriate today, but to win a wish, the story needs to be exceptional, especially in light of the breathtaking hours-long tale Peeta spun for me last night, and I don't dare attempt to return to this morning's spur-of-the-moment "folktale" of the gander and vixen.

But I can't quite resist a different tale that relates delicately to both of us and gives us a glorious ending together where, of course, none will ever be. "I have both," I inform him triumphantly. "Let me know when you'd like me to remit each one and I'll start working on my wish."

He chuckles softly. "Well, eager thing, if you sing to me now we could move directly to the cuddle-nest as soon as supper is cleaned up and I lay out the coverlets," he replies, and I drum my spoon against the plate edge for attention.

"I like this idea immensely," I tell him, and set aside our nearly empty plate to take his hands in mine. This is, after all, a children's song, which is best accompanied by merry clapping, and I tap out a soft steady rhythm with his big hands as I sing:

 _All my little ducklings_  
_Swimming on the lake,_  
_Swimming on the lake_  
_Little heads a-fishing  
_ _Tiny tails aloft._

 _All my little doves are_  
_Cooing on the roof,_  
_Cooing on the roof,_  
_One takes to the air and  
_ _All the rest go too._

 _All my little chickens,_  
_Scratching in the straw,_  
_Scratching in the straw,_  
_Find a little kernel,  
_ _Oh, how glad they are!_

 _All my little goslings_  
_Waddle through the yard,_  
_Waddle through the yard,_  
_Searching in the pond, they  
_ _Paddle in a round._

It is, quite possibly, the silliest song I know and thus a giggle or two escapes me in the playful recounting, but before Peeta can utter a word of complaint I hasten to remind him, "You didn't say it had to be a serious song!"

As a result, I'm entirely unprepared when he shifts me sideways and tips me back against his arm, his sweet face positively aglow, to nuzzle me thoroughly from neck to ears. "I _loved_ it," he murmurs, tracing my nose with the tip of his, once, twice, and concluding with a pip to the tip of mine. "I love how silly it is and how happy you were when you sang it. I want to hear you sing it to your children."

"I'll never have children," I whisper sadly, "but I'll sing it to yours, if you want."

"I look forward to that," he whispers back and hugs me to him, for much longer than he would need to, and it feels so good that I reach my free hand to his nape to hold him close in return.

 _I love you,_ I croon wordlessly against his throat. _Surely it will be enough simply to love you._

"I want to hear _all_ your songs, Katniss," he murmurs against my crown, rocking me a little. "I want to learn them, every last word. I want to hear where they came from, how you learned them and what they mean to you."

I sigh and let my hand inch up to bury itself in the roots of his curls. "Even the silly children's songs?" I wonder, curling and uncurling my fingers against his scalp.

He moans softly. " _Especially_ the silly children's songs," he affirms. "There's been so little of happiness or humor in your life, sweetling, and these songs are like treasures, carefully stored away and preserved in the midst of hopeless days."

"Sometimes that's all you have," I muse, but neither angrily nor with any real grief. "Pebble broth and a song about ducklings."

He gently releases me from our embrace and I sink back into the cradle of his arm, my hand slipping from his hair to catch at his nape once more. "I would take all that away in a heartbeat if it were possible, sweetheart," he murmurs, stroking my cheek with his free hand. "But I can't help thinking that your childhood was far richer than mine, with your priceless heritage of stories and songs."

"You had stories too," I remind him. "You had the Snow Maiden and bridal braids," but we both know what he means. Not only was I surrounded day and night by my eloquent father's songs and tales, but my father himself might have stepped out of a folktale, like his huntress mother and her own father, the green-eyed elf king, about whom Peeta knows nothing yet. Peeta may have grown up over a snug bakery with a vivacious storytelling grandmother and an affectionate father, but he was working in the bakery long before my own days were half so regimented, and beneath the critical eye of his bitter mother, whose own heritage is best left unmentioned.

"Then let me share it with you," I urge. "You can feed away my memories of pebble broth and I'll give you a proper childhood, filled with songs and tales and…and the few fairy words that I know."

"Fairy words?" he echoes curiously, pale brows aloft. "I knew you were hiding your magic somewhere –"

"Not magic," I assure him quickly, smiling all the same. "Just…magic- _seeming_ , like you'd expect the language of elves or fairies to sound."

"I'm doubly intrigued," he says, and there's no light of teasing in his beautiful eyes. "Please give me a fairy word, my little wild queen."

It comes to my mind at once: a word I wasn't even sure I knew and now resolve to use on a regular basis, and my smile spreads to my eyes. " _Gänschen_ ," I say, and kiss the tip of his nose.

He blinks fiercely, as though I cast a spell in his face, and it only increases my merriment. "What does it mean?" he breathes, and I giggle. "'Gosling,'" I reply with a grin and kiss him again, this time quick and light on his awestruck mouth.

 _Gänschen_ , _Gänschen_ , _Gänschen_ …

Strictly speaking, _I'm_ the gosling, I suppose, since I wore the nickname first, but Peeta is firmly established as a gander now, and since the only other goose-related word I know is _Gänsebraten_ – which not only means the roasted sort but is far too brash and clunky to roll off the tongue as an endearment – _Gänschen_ he must be.

"I suppose," he croaks. "I suppose it's too much to hope that you might know the fairy word for 'vixen'?"

"I shall tell you," I answer grandly. "But only if you swear never to speak it imprudently, for it carries far too powerful a magic for a mortal baker's son to wield unawares," I tease. "And to be entirely accurate, the word I know means ' _little_ vixen,' not simply 'vixen.'"

"All the better," he says, a smile curling his beautiful mouth. "And I duly promise never to utter it without your leave, my queen."

" _Füchslein,_ " I tell him, and reward his promise with another kiss, this one a foxy snout poke pressed squarely between his brows.

" _Please,_ can I tell you about your surprise now?" he pleads, hefting me upright and catching my face in his hands. "Before putting away the food and making your nest, I mean. The timing is so perfect I think I might burst."

He's almost beside himself with nerves and eagerness and even a little impatience – if he were ten years younger he'd be squirming in his chair – and I can't help feeling likewise, as I try to guess what he could possibly mean to show me that would make him feel this way. "That seems fair enough, my little _Gänschen_ ," I reply, and he promptly unwraps himself from about me, clambers to his feet, dashes to reach behind the sofa and is sitting beside me, his New Year's paintbox from Pollux in hand, before my body has even acknowledged the absence of his.

"This is it, Katniss," he says, breathless and bright-eyed as he raises the lid. "How you can share your stories with me and I can help preserve them till they're all you remember of the hollow days."

He takes out a stack of pages and sets the box aside and I realize they're all _sketches._ Surely more sketches than he could create in a _week_ , let alone in the brief interval of day before Lavinia brought his lemons.

"I probably went a little overboard," he admits, flushing at the height of the stack, "but once it hit me I was scrambling like a madman to get as many ideas and details down as possible."

He hands me the pages and my mouth drops open in a combination of delight, disbelief, and sheer horror.

 _Oh no,_ I think _. Not this. Anything but this._

The top image depicts a fox – a small gray fox, with its characteristic dainty triangular face and shorter snout, only its fur has been colored in a deep black – and a goose, with pale yellow feathers that tuft up like curly hair. The goose – gander, of course – is perched atop a flour barrel with his neck stretched out as he clatters his beak at the vixen, who is licking her lips as she slinks along the floor toward him.

At the top of the page Peeta has written his ideas for a title:

 _Fox & Goose: A Winter Tale (A love story? A winter courtship?)_  
_Gander & Vixen_  
_What Became of the Vixen's Feast: A Folktale  
_ _What's Good for the Gander?_

How did I not see this coming? Peeta said this morning that he wanted to make a storybook of my nonexistent folktale – promised to do so, really – and he's talked about nothing but foxes and geese all day. He even sent a picture of a goslit and kitling with my lunch hamper, complete with a note explaining that it was an initial sketch _for our storybook._

I turn to the next page in a dream. This one holds a sketch of a curly yellow gosling hidden among blooming katniss stalks, watching a tiny black fox kit and her father traipsing proudly along the lakeshore with a brace of field mice held between them. _The gosling watched from his hiding place, fearful yet fascinated,_ Peeta has written above the image. _Surely such a small, lovely creature could mean him no harm._

"I wasn't sure how it started," he explains, "so I drew a couple of my ideas." He moves the page a little to one side so I can see the next at the same time, which features the same black fox kit, skinny as a rail, watching from the shadows beneath an apple tree as three plump yellow goslings, all feathered with the same curly blond down, gobble up breadcrumbs scattered by an unseen hand. _"I do not eat bread," thought the kit,_ reads Peeta's writing at the top of the page, _but oh, how hungry she was! Just one fat gosling might feed her for a month of Sundays. "Someday I shall have a goose in my pantry," she resolved, "the finest and fattest, for my very own, and I shall bundle myself in its feathers and feast upon its flesh all winter long."_

"Is…is it okay that I did this?" Peeta wonders worriedly. "You're not saying anything and…you seem upset. It's just a few sketches; I'm happy to put them away and forget –"

"It's _wonderful_ ," I breathe, gazing up at him. "I've never had anything – or even _held_ anything – like this in my life. It's just – I barely know this story," I tell him, which is more truth than lie. "I'm not sure how it starts or how the vixen catches the gander or…or _any_ of it, really, and it wouldn't be right for me to give you the wrong version of a tale to record and pass along –"

"I didn't think there was any such thing," he interrupts, so gently. "Different interpretations simply enrich the story's heritage – and inform any future retellings. For example," he says, "my father told me about a little prince who tamed a fox but loved a rose, and someday I hope to tell my children about the vixen who tamed and loved that little prince. And maybe this time, he won't leave her," he murmurs, "but instead they'll make a home in the apple tree, or beneath it, and live quite happily for the rest of their days on stolen wheat from the fields and chickens from the farms.

"It's not the original version of the story, maybe," he says softly, "but does that make it wrong, or any less lovely – or unworthy of being told to a new generation?"

I shake my head helplessly. "What if it was supposed to be a cautionary tale?" I protest. "To teach geese – you know, foolish children – not to trust the foxes of this world. Or what if it makes a wild thing think she can love a tame one, and the first time she tries to be affectionate she – she bites her poor sweetheart's head off?"

Peeta laughs harder at this than I suspect he's laughed at anything before in his life, squeezing his eyes shut as his powerful shoulders shake with merriment. "Oh Katniss," he sighs, "I doubt even the eagerest vixen could miss _that_ badly. And the gander fell in love with her in the full knowledge that she wanted to eat him," he reminds me, "so he'd be more than prepared for a few love bites, accidental or otherwise.

"It could work, Katniss," he concludes, the same words he said this morning when he explained, so sweetly, the precious offspring that such a union would produce, and spoken as somberly. "And I want so badly to give you goslits and kitlings," he adds in a whisper.

I think of downy paws batting their way out of a moon-patterned eggshell and two pairs of tiny webbed feet paddling sleepily in the snug dark pool of my womb. "This is what you meant, isn't it – about granting my wish for goslits and kitlings tonight?" I say, nodding at the sketches in my lap, and wonder why the realization leaves me a little sad. "This is how you were going to give me the babies."

His face falls, echoing my sadness. "I know it's not the magic you hoped for," he says ruefully. "And I didn't mean to deceive you or give you false hope. I'd do anything to give you real goslits and kitlings, sweetheart," he whispers, reaching out to cup my cheek. "I'm sorry that the best I can do is draw them."

"But don't you see: that's more than enough," I assure him, nuzzling my cheek deeper into his palm. "Until you made the first sketch, goslits and kitlings didn't exist at all, outside of my imagination."

"And mine," he points out quietly. "I wanted them too, Katniss – _so_ badly."

"And now we'll both have them for the rest of our lives," I explain. "Any given night we can sip our cream-coffee and snuggle up by the fireside and look at our impossible babies, so beautifully depicted that you'd think you could stroke the page and feel fur – or feathers – beneath your fingertips."

"We could skip the first part of the story, if you'd rather," he says huskily. "If you're worried about getting that part wrong, we could just jump ahead to the babies and figure out the folktale part later. We could ask your mother if she remembers it, or another Seam –"

"No," I tell him, "I want the whole story: the brave gander and the hungry vixen who somehow, impossibly, fell in love and made a home together and filled a pine-bough nest with their babies."

He smiles softly and caresses my cheek. "I want that too," he murmurs. " _So_ much, Katniss."

I turn back to the sketches with neither hesitation nor misgivings. Peeta's left most of the folktale for me to flesh out, creating sketches and snatches of narrative for particular scenes inspired by our activities this morning, like the gander obliviously curling up in the vixen's nest of furs while she's away on a hunt and the vixen stealing a determined mouthful of yellow feathers from her sweetheart's tail.

"She won't find any down there," I tease, and Peeta concurs with a chuckle. "That's why I drew her so disgruntled," he replies. "She was hoping she could start on the end furthest from the beak, but to no avail."

He's also sketched out an imaginary, humorous sequence of the wily vixen taking daily nips till all that's left of the gander is his beak, trawling crossly after small black paws, which reduces me to a fit of giggles. "This is _so_ good, Peeta," I sigh. "The gander and vixen are so lifelike and yet you've used them to tell a very believable funny story."

"I'm so glad you like it," he says, pressing a quick kiss to my temple and blushing faintly with pleasure.

I turn to the next sketch and Peeta almost leaps out of his skin. "That one's not quite ready!" he blurts, making a valiant yank at the page, but I shake my head, my fingers curling around both sides of the page and my eyes fixed on its image.

The vixen lies on her side in the pine-bough nest, her keen eyes drowsy and drifting shut and her body curled about the three downy golden kitlings nursing at her belly, all tiny peaked ears and dancing twig-tails. One bright-eyed black goslit is perched on the edge of the nest, watching the vixen's own tail for movement with all the patient intent of a hunter, and a second is nestled in the lush fur of her throat, its head buried beneath its wing.

There's nothing incomplete about this picture whatsoever. Unlike the others, this sketch has been painted in lush and loving detail, from the glint in the pouncing goslit's eye to the utter contentment in its mother's.

It might be the most beautiful picture I've ever seen in my life.

It's also plain as day that Peeta lavished more time and energy on this picture than most of the others combined – in which case, I can't begin to guess why he wouldn't want me to see it.

"Five babies," I say at last, lightly. "That gander is one optimistic father."

"Seven," he corrects softly, releasing his hold on the page. "There's one more of each, but the gander is hopelessly trying to teach the other goslit how to forage while the other kitling is trying to decide whether or not Dad is food."

I peek behind the painting to find a simple charcoal sketch of the gander outside a farmhouse, flapping his wings and stretching as tall as he can in a futile attempt to reach the pie cooling on the windowsill while his unimpressed goslit looks on and his kitling gnaws curiously at his leg.

"It's _perfect_ ," I whisper. "All of it – every last detail. Why on earth wouldn't you want me to see this?"

"I-I thought you might not like seeing the vixen, um…feeding the babies," he says, staring down at his knees. "I haven't ever seen new baby kits so I didn't know if I'd drawn things right, and…maybe it's something you wouldn't want to see," he concludes with a feeble gesture at the page. "I thought it was a really sweet moment, but you might find it awkward or embarrassing –"

"To see a mother feeding her babies?" I challenge, only to realize that, before this moment, he would have been exactly right. I can't look away fast enough from the Seam women breastfeeding out on their stoops and even blush at a stray glimpse of Lady suckling her kids. But since coming to live with Peeta, the idea of motherhood – of pregnancy and nursing and everything in between – has grown strangely and overwhelmingly appealing, to the extent that I'm prepared to offer myself to carry Peeta's children if his sweetheart won't have him. So this painting of a black fox nursing downy yellow kitlings is something of a fairy tale in itself; an illustration of the possibility that Peeta and I could ever be together, even if only to create his children.

"Not this one," I murmur, stroking each tiny golden head with a fingertip.

"It's not…gross or weird?" Peeta wonders quietly, still looking at his knees.

I lean over and kiss his cheek with a sound smack, startling him and riveting his attention back on me. "Not when it's my babies," I reply with a smile, only to frantically rephrase at his resulting wide eyes: "I-I mean – the babies from my imagination – _our_ imagination! Not _my_ babies, of course."

He gazes at me for a long, silent moment. "You know, Katniss," he says softly, "if you were ever to change your mind and decide you wanted to have children – or kits or fawns – it would be entirely okay. I-I would welcome it, actually," he adds haltingly, a strange choice of words, and I tip my head at him in confusion.

"If…if you were to get pregnant," he explains, blushing brightly and furiously evading my eyes, "it would be a beautiful completion of healing: the tiny, starving girl, grown healthy and strong and bringing her own child into the world. And I confess, I'm curious to see what you'd have," he teases, glancing back at me. "Lovely wild thing that you are, this house would be overrun with kits and chicks and fawns – and who knows what else!"

I carefully set aside the precious sketches and pounce on him, knocking him flat on his back, his curls just inches from the fire. "Kits and chicks and fawns?" I echo imperiously, though my heart is positively dancing.

"Well, they'd probably come out as ordinary little black-haired girls and boys," he gasps, but merrily. "But at the stroke of twelve, or the rise of the full moon, or maybe just moonrise in general, they'd turn into keen furred hunters or tiny winged things with sharp ears and silver voices."

I ache deep in my belly and wonder briefly, madly, if it would really be so hard. Maybe this sweet, merry boy could come inside me tonight – a quick, tender coupling in our cuddle-nest, punctuated by gentle laughter and soft, wet kisses – and we could spend the rest of the winter curled together with his big warm hands spanning my belly, watching his babe grow. Foxes mate in winter, after all, and even Peeta sees that I'm more fox than girl.

 _That winter was for wooing,_ Granny Ashpet murmurs in my mind, _for wild courtship gifts and shy careful preens and nesting, and the spring that followed was for kits and chicks._

It would be so easy – except for two equally shattering impossibilities: Peeta is madly in love with his sweetheart and would be horrified at the thought of having sex with me for _any_ reason, and at this particular moment, I _can't_ have children. I haven't had my menses in almost three months, and without that fertile flow of blood, I won't be able to conceive.

I scramble off him, hot and shamed, and crawl back to the abandoned pile of sketches, but he's behind me in moment, fingertips carefully brushing my back – which is bold for this boy who lets me run from him without protest, and therefore more welcome than he could ever dream. "I'm sorry, Katniss," he soothes. "I should never have made fun of your babies – or you – like that. I know it's hard for you to even consider the possibility of a future with children and –"

"And you're right," I tell him, looking up with a wide, contrived smile. "My babies – if I ever had any – would be little wild things, all black fur and sharp teeth. I'm not angry, Peeta," I assure him. "Just…feeling a little silly, I guess."

"Do you want to save rest of the sketches for another night?" he offers, splaying his hand on my back. "I shouldn't have foisted a whole storybook on you before you'd even told me the original tale."

I shake my head. "I _love_ your storybook, every last detail," I insist. "Please, can I see the rest? I promise to behave myself from here on out."

He chuckles. "As far as I'm concerned, you've been 'behaving yourself' perfectly all this while," he teases. "But I'd love for you to see the rest of my ideas, and maybe tomorrow you can tell me what to add and which to leave out."

I squeeze the stack of pages in both hands and wave it emphatically at him. "All of this stays in," I order, "and you only have to add something if there's a gaping hole in the story."

"Well, there's a massive one already," he confesses shyly. "I don't know how they got together – I mean!" he adds quickly, cheeks pinking, "I don't know quite when they decided to make a go at falling in love. When the gander decided not to cower and hiss and the vixen decided she'd rather cuddle her captive than nip him to nothing, one bite at a time."

I think back to Granny Ashpet and my father spinning the tale in my head this morning as I lay with my boy in the snow, and of my own interjections. "I, um… Dad and Granny Ashpet couldn't quite agree on how it went," I answer carefully. "Do – do you have a pencil and a spare page? I'll write down the bits I recall."

Peeta may be seated on the floor but he still falls over himself to get me the requested materials and offers me his paintbox as a writing surface, which I accept. I scribble quick and furiously, jotting down as much as I can remember of the conflicting accounts, then hand the page to him for consideration.

He grins. " _The gander is crafty,_ " he reads aloud. "' _The down must mature a good six months or it will shrivel when plucked'_ – I love it!"He continues on silently, now and again shaping a word with his lips or murmuring a phrase, then suddenly he gazes up at me. "You're sure this is how it went?" he asks. " _The gander and the vixen love each other and always have, ever since he was a round downy gosling and she a shy and scrawny kit, peering out from the shadows beneath her father's foreleg. She didn't hunt him as a meal but as a mate and he willingly gave himself up to his carnivorous sweetheart, content to be eaten if that was all she could offer him._ "

I shrug, blushing without reason. "That's how Granny Ashpet told it," I reply honestly. "She believed the vixen had always loved the gander, ever since they were little, while Dad thought the she came to love him that winter in spite of herself, and her instincts."

" _That winter was for wooing,_ " he reads aloud in a hushed voice," _for wild courtship gifts and shy careful preens and nesting, and the spring that followed was for kits and chicks._

"And which do you think is true?" he wonders.

"Both," I reply without hesitation, smiling ever so slightly. "Tales work that way, you know: it's all about the teller's perspective. Granny Ashpet was a fierce huntress who fell in love with a weak and scrawny boy – someone she might have eaten for breakfast as easily as a fox might eat a goose – and my father was a storyteller through and through, who loved the humor and unexpected twists of a tale, especially such an ironic one as this."

Of course, I leave out the fact that the vixen is and always has been _me_ , not to mention that both accounts were formed in my head and based on my own feelings and experiences. I fell in love with Peeta this winter, unwittingly and against every fiber of my being, but acknowledging that doomed love also made me realize that I've cared for him much longer than I ever could have imagined. That indeed, there might never have been a time when I _didn't_ love him.

Peeta smiles. "I can't wait to draw these things," he says, "if you'll allow it, of course."

I think of the bedside drawer full of beautiful dreams of the sun and moon, of bears and birds and snow-maidens brought to life by a sweetheart's kiss, and wonder how terrible I would be to ask this boy to make storybooks of them as well – pretending all the while, of course, that they're folktales, not the desperate longings of my foolish heart.

I lean up to press a lingering kiss to the tip of his nose. "I'll allow it," I answer dutifully, and scoot in to recline against his warm bulk as I look through the rest of the sketches. Unsurprisingly, he kisses the top of my head in reply and curls an arm around me, wriggling a little to give me hollows to sink into, and I smile to myself.

After the pictures of the vixen nursing her babies and her mate hopelessly trying to steal a pie for the other two are half a dozen simple sketches of the gander lavishing his bride with affection and gifts, here preening her coat with deep strokes of his beak, there gifting her with a beakful of blossoming katniss or a ripe apple, rolled all the way from the tree to her nest, or – best of all – a dense brown square of what is unmistakably ginger cake. "He may be no good at fishing and foraging but he certainly knows his way around a bakery," Peeta chuckles. "And I have a sneaking suspicion that even his lethal little carnivore would enjoy a good ginger cake."

"Foxes aren't strictly carnivores, you know," I inform him, tipping my head back with a grin. "They _prefer_ rabbits and mice – and the odd fat goose, of course," I tease, "but they'll eat berries, acorns, mushrooms, grain – even rose hips, Dad said, in a cold winter."

Peeta gives a gasp that's only half-exaggerated. "Why on earth didn't you say so in the first place?" he sputters. "I've been trying to figure out what on earth these two could share for a meal, let alone cook up for the children on holidays! I figured they'd end up with separate feasts in separate corners of the woods, unless by some helpful twist, geese should happen to eat fish–?"

"Not as a rule," I reply, "but it happens from time to time," but by this point I'm giggling so hard I almost can't breathe and Peeta thunders on, "Aye, well, _you_ may laugh, little miss, but _I'm_ the one who spent a frantic morning trying to think of tender mealtime scenes that didn't involve the vixen offering dead mice to her horrified goslits!"

"Oh, sweet boy," I sigh, taking his hands and kissing each one. "I think this vixen would eat whatever her gander brought home, and I daresay she loves him and the babies too much to offer their delicate little palates anything of the sort.

"And furthermore," I decide, "I think the vixen laid the kitling-eggs some weeks before she birthed the goslits – gestation being a bit longer for mammals – at which point the gander became altogether broody and took up residence on the nest while she went hunting for her meals and foraging for his. That way –"

"He could help the kitlings hatch," Peeta says eagerly, picking up the thread. "They don't have an egg tooth, so it would be difficult for them to break out of their shells, but the gander could crack them just a little with his beak – so they'd still have to get themselves out but they'd have a little help at the start. And then they'd see him right away when they hatched – and imprint on him!" he concludes triumphantly. "That's how they wouldn't think to eat him!"

I adore every bit of this but can't help chiming in with, "Kits are born with their eyes closed, so wouldn't the kitlings hatch that way? That's how you drew the one in the sketch you gave me."

Peeta frowns in frustration – at himself for forgetting such a crucial detail, not at me – but after several long, contemplative moments continues, "You're exactly right. But since goslings hatch with their eyes open – and promptly imprint on the parent – the poor broody gander would instinctively _expect_ the same to happen with his four beautiful eggs," he says excitedly. "But instead he'd have to help them hatch – and then suddenly find himself surrounded by blind, whimpering kitlings that won't be happy with anything but their mother's milk!"

"And the vixen would be so perplexed," I join in, caught up in his enthusiasm. "Because she would instinctively expect to give birth to live kits, so when her labor started she would bed down in her den – and instead of a litter of babies she'd birth a clutch of big old goose eggs! Which would be confusing and upsetting all at once, because foxes _eat_ eggs, so what was supposed to be her eagerly awaited babies looks like _food_ – and then she'd realize that her kits must be inside those eggs and panic about them not being able to breathe or the fact that she can't feed them. So she'd be frantically nosing the eggs around the nest and whining –"

"When the gander came in!" Peeta takes over. "He understands eggs perfectly – or so he thinks! – and he'd shoo her away and take over the nest, sitting on the eggs while his bewildered mate paced about and finally went hunting to banish her anxiety."

"But what about her milk?" I wonder. "Once the kitlings hatched –"

"The two halves of the litter would coincide, almost perfectly," he resolves. "Out of nowhere the vixen would realize she was about to 'give birth' again – or lay eggs, she assumed – so she would squeeze into the nest beside her mate, with every expectation that she would just be adding more eggs to the clutch, but instead out would come these furry little goslings for her to lick clean, and maybe that process would give off a hormone or something that would signal to the kitlings that it was time to hatch –"

" _Yes!_ " I squeak, loving this theory. "Maybe they could smell her milk through their shells – brought on by the birth of the goslits, or maybe something she consumes while she's licking them triggers her milk to let down – so the kitlings started rolling around in their eggs, determined to get out, and –"

"And that's when the valiant gander helps them break out!" Peeta exclaims. "He's _so_ ready for this moment and so excited. He already has three sweet furry goslits that are snuggled and sleeping against their mama, exhausted from their birthing, and he can't wait to add four more babies to the batch. Only out hatch four downy kitlings, all blind and mewling –"

"That crawl straight over to their mama's belly, to their papa's devastation," I laugh, both at the story and Peeta's exaggerated chagrin. "He was _so_ ready for his goslings to pop out and imprint on him – he was constantly telling the eggs stories and singing them little songs while Mama was gone a-hunting – and instead when they finally hatched, they were all snouts and paws and tails and wanted nothing but milk –"

"To the distress of their siblings as well," he points out. "They were happily snuggled against Mama's belly, all sleepy post-natal bliss, when along came these blind nosy things, rooting about with their pointy little snouts and latching onto _their_ mother – because as far as the newborn goslits can tell, these fluffy yellow things are no kin of theirs – which I daresay would go over none too well."

"And that's when Papa Gander's moment finally arrives," I tell him happily. "He'll have duly plucked out a ridiculous amount of belly down to create his brood patch – an area of skin with good blood flow for incubating the eggs," I explain. "Which perplexed but delighted his mate at the time, since he used that down to cushion and insulate their nest, and now he can guide those disgruntled newborn goslits under said brood patch – which their instincts are probably guiding them to anyway – for warmth and comfort."

"I love it!" Peeta cries and seizes me in a deep, lingering hug. "Oh Katniss, it's _perfect._ "

I laugh in reply, partly because of how beautifully this bizarre tale came together and partly because at this moment, everything feels so _wonderful_ : golden, incandescent, resonant with hope and contentment and joy. "Is there something wrong with us?" I murmur against his throat, not particularly concerned if the answer should be yes. "I guarantee no folktale ever went into _that_ degree of detail."

"No," Peeta croons, hugging me tighter still. "We just both really want those babies."

My belly kindles at his words but there's nothing unsettling about it this time. Everything around us is joyous and golden and radiant, so why not my womb as well, which was already aglow with longing for Peeta's babes? It would be so gloriously easy to simply mesh together: here, on the sofa, upstairs in his bed of soft sunset or my own, all sweet pine pillows and plush furs. I don't precisely know how it works but our bodies have proven so adept at finding each other's rises and hollows, and surely instinct would play a role as well. Peeta's child could be growing inside me by morning –

"No," I choke out and struggle free of those strong, sweet arms, but I catch his face in my hands and kiss the worry and confusion from his eyes. "Not 'no' to the babies, or the book, or any of that," I soothe. "My mind jumped to something…distressing. That's what I was saying no to."

He strokes my arms with gentle fingers. "It's okay," he murmurs, soothing me in his turn without trying to pull me close again. "Whatever you're afraid of, little sweetheart, I'll protect you with everything I have."

I laugh brokenly because he can't protect me from my primal, hopeless hunger – no one can – but nonetheless I tell him, "Thank you, sweet boy," and nuzzle my forehead against his.

"Tell you what," he says lightly, "why don't you take a little break to wash and change for bed? I'll write down all those things we just sorted out and clean up the picnic, and we can reconvene in the cuddle-nest for your story."

"A break?" I puzzle, leaning back. "From what, _cuddling_?"

"That's what _I_ needed," he replies earnestly, "early this afternoon, when I left the hamper instead of joining you for lunch. Touch is a need, just like warmth and food, but when you haven't had much of it to begin with, a large portion all at once is overwhelming."

I consider this and realize he's exactly right. Where I've been perfectly content to glut myself on nips and nuzzles, Peeta – who is so determined to save my kisses for the hard or lonely days ahead – is rationing like a dirt-poor miser. "Am I – did I – um… _hurt_ you?" I wonder, frowning at the thought, and Peeta chuckles gently.

"You did anything _but_ ," he assures me, brushing my cheek with his fingertips. "On the contrary, I feel so wonderful, I've been floating in a happy fog all day. That's why I didn't get more done."

I raise my brows at him and glance demonstratively between the picnic spread and his stack of sketches. "Indeed," I say dryly. "Your productivity has hit rock bottom, you lazy thing."

He laughs uncertainly, as though there might be a nugget of truth in my teasing criticism. "Well, I didn't get everything done that I _wanted_ to," he admits. "There's something I really want to give you but I just couldn't get back to it today, and I feel so bad about it, especially after everything we've been talking about tonight."

I regard him for a long curious moment and realize he must be talking about one of my impossible wishes. He must be making something for me – a painting or another storybook, maybe – that has to do with one of them. "Babies?" I wonder softly and watch something crumble behind his eyes, like hunger and heartache all at once.

"In a manner of speaking," he says hoarsely. "And yes: I want to give you babies so badly, Katniss."

I curl a hand in his sweater and lean in to nestle my face in the curve of his neck, rooting about till I find the pulse at the base and tucking my cheekbone gently against it. _I want to give you babies too, sweet boy,_ I croon silently. _I would lie down here and now and open myself to you if you wanted. I can't conceive tonight, but maybe turning the soil would awaken my dormant womb and ready it for seed._

My secret place is warm and wet and for some reason that makes the emptiness even more acute.

"Keep us out a plate of food?" I say, and Peeta nods against me.

"And something to drink," he promises.

My body is leaden when I stand and even worse as I climb the stairs, not because I'm tired or hurting but because it truly can't bear to be pulled away from Peeta, however briefly, and I realize this proposed break might be very well-timed indeed. Another five minutes and I'd probably be unable to move away from him, not to mention the fact that my body and mind have been wandering quite willfully in troubling directions. Another ten minutes and I'd be tugging at Peeta's clothes or peeling out of my own, all the while murmuring beautiful nonsense about plowing the lifeless earth and seeding it with fertile stars.

I want Peeta's children, so much that it almost overwhelms me, and I want him to fit inside me like a mate or a lover and fill the keening emptiness between my legs. But as both of these are things that I can never, _ever_ have – merely _wanting_ them makes me reprehensible – I resolve to take this break to clear my head and banish these terrible longings.

Lavinia appears to have stayed out in the stable with her husband for the evening, or maybe they're both up in her room already; either way, I'm grateful for her absence. I dip into the bathroom and lock both doors, then sit on the ledge of the tub to hike my skirt and wriggle my underwear down to my knees. The crotch has been wet through where it pressed against my secret place – the same colorless dampness as before only much more of it, with a strange tangy odor that shakes me to my bones – and the hair deep between my legs glistens with something that's slippery to the touch.

I stumble over to the sink, scrambling out of my underwear as I go, and cover them with a basinful of hot soapy water. I want to rinse away the bizarre awful wetness from my body too but it would be foolish to run the tub just for that, and I certainly don't need a shower from the decadent waterfalls just to clean one lowly part of me – not to mention, the last thing I want to have to do is explain to Peeta why I took a quick bath when I only went upstairs to change for bed.

As my underwear soak in the sink, I gingerly wipe at the slipperiness between my legs with a warm washcloth. I never touch these mysterious parts of myself, let alone in such a focused fashion, and the hidden folds are hyper-sensitive and a little swollen. I part them hesitantly with two fingers to find the same glistening fluid coating the furrow between and the strange little nubbin concealed within and whimper with dismay as I wipe frantically at this even more tender flesh, finally hurling the washcloth into the sink and running back to the tub.

I plug the drain, pour out few drops of a purple gel that smells of lavender and sage, and turn on both taps, just enough to make a shallow, soapy pool at the bottom of the tub, then I discard my dress, bra, and dainty red shoes and climb in, curling around myself as I let warm fragrant water wash away what my terrified hands couldn't.

I'm frightened by this crude new response from my body and I no longer care if it signals the return of my menses, and the hope that would bring. I want it to go away; to go back to feeling content and cared-for in Peeta's presence, not growing warm and slippery in this most intimate place and wanting nothing more than for its pulsing emptiness to be filled. I know next to nothing about sex but filling a woman's hollow place is an obvious and substantial part of the process, and it makes me nauseous that my body has decided to want this in Peeta's presence, to the extent that –

" _Oh no,_ " I groan, burying my face in my hands at the realization. The heat, the swelling, that awful slippery fluid…my body doesn't simply want Peeta inside; it's _preparing_ for him: warming and softening and even lubricating itself to ease his entry.

I sob angrily into my palms. Peeta can never, _ever_ find out about this. I'll burn these underwear if I have to, and a handful of menstrual rags will absorb any future wetness that I absolutely can't prevent. I didn't think to bring any of those from home, but Lavinia must have something similar I can borrow. I'll duck up to her bedroom before going back downstairs and fortify my underthings thoroughly with whatever I can find.

Unfortunately, thoughts of Lavinia in this context abruptly remind me of Pollux burying his face between her legs and I raise my head with a strangled cry. Why would he even _want_ to be so close to such an awful place, and what could he possibly mean to do there, let alone with his _mouth_? At best, I know this is the place where bodies join to share pleasure and create life, so what purpose would it serve to – kiss? Nuzzle? Nibble?

The area in question tingles at the thought and I realize, with a flush that scalds from my hairline all the way down to my breasts, that feeling a man's lips on that tender, hidden landscape – soft and hesitant and gentle, the way Peeta does everything – might actually feel _incredible._ It's a little repulsive to consider, but maybe a boy who dreams of loving _every inch_ _of her precious body with every inch of his own_ truly means _every_ inch: even the strange, shadowy ones, concealed between limbs and veiled with coarse hair.

I think again of Peeta's sweet face dipping between my legs, this time intent on that hidden, glistening hollow, and keen softly in my throat.

_Not for me, not for me, not for me…_

Wanting things you can never have is a hopeless waste of time and energy, and this one is certainly no exception. If Peeta and I _should_ ever end up coupling, whether for children or simple comfort, there's no doubt in my mind that it will be a brief, careful process; little more than mating, if a good bit less crude and more gentle. He'll have neither the time nor interest in loving every inch of my body with every inch of his own, and he _certainly_ won't be kissing me between my legs.

I give a few cursory splashes toward my groin and wriggle my backside against the stones, determine to remove every last remnant of the strange slick fluid without having to touch myself there again, then I hop up to fetch a towel, trailing water and suds, and dry myself in a brisk and nonspecific fashion. I wring out my underwear, which seem to have retained no sign or scent of the colorless stain, but I can't begin to think where to leave them to dry. Anywhere in here will make them visible and therefore of interest to Peeta and if I hang them over the warming rack in my room they might be seen by Lavinia or Peeta or even – somehow, the worst of the possibilities – my night companion. I finally fold them inside my damp towel and hang that over the warming rack, reasoning that the only person who could potentially find them there would be Lavinia, and she would probably assume I'd been caught off-guard by my cycle and simply washed out the stain.

Returning to my room, I tug on a clean pair of underwear in a safe shade of midnight-sky blue – least likely to show any stains – and move on to the much more difficult task of choosing nightclothes for the cuddle-nest. A shirt rather than a nightgown would give warm questing fingers easy access to the skin of my back, and pajama trousers – or better still, leggings – would allow me to wrap my legs around Peeta's hips and nestle myself snugly over the rise of his groin, filling the hollow between my thighs with the exquisite firmness between his and maybe even rocking my hips a little to increase and deepen the contact – but of course, these are the last things I should be hoping, let alone _trying,_ for right now. If I had any sense I'd wear the ankle-length nightgown of gray wool that Lavinia laid out the night I intended to offer myself to Peeta; the one I stubbornly refused in favor of a dainty summer nightdress. It would certainly be warm – and to be fair, maybe _too_ warm for a nest of furs by the fire.

But then, a nightgown comes with its own set of complications, namely bare legs and an almost ridiculous ease of being hiked to the waist, and I don't even want to imagine how wonderful it would feel to move against Peeta's groin with only a thin strip of cotton covering my secret place.

I finally settle on a pair of red-and-green plaid bottoms and a soft thermal shirt the color of sweetheart ribbons. Peeta said he enjoys seeing me in bright colors and he seems to especially like me in red, which even I have to admit does something downright magical to my face, so this ensemble is an ideal combination of cozy and pretty – not to mention, optimal for any intimate cuddling that might arise. I promise myself I won't push for any such – _and absolutely no more kissing either!_ I scold my blushing reflection – but if Peeta pulls me close and my legs have to fall open to accommodate his hips, or if embracing hands should drift beneath the hem of a shirt, surely there's no harm in that.

I braid my hair loosely for sleep, weaving today's jaunty offering through the plait, and have a quick wash at the sink then, wrapping the fox fur coverlet around me like the cloak of some mysterious wild enchantress, I dart upstairs, intent on creeping into Lavinia's bathroom for a handful of menstrual rags, just in case Peeta's proximity makes my body act out again.

Of course, as today's luck would have it, I practically crash into Lavinia herself at the landing and recoil so fast I almost topple down the stairs. "I'm so sorry!" I blurt, reeling around to run to safety, but she only laughs and tugs me into her room, switching the light back on. She's fully dressed and – blessedly – alone, though she's carrying an armful of blankets, an extra cardigan, and a pair of thick socks, which leads me to believe that she's on her way back to the stable for the night. A curious plan, considering how cold the weather has been, but she probably prefers the seclusion of Pollux's bedroom, especially after today.

She sets down the pile and takes out her slate. _Should have checked in,_ she writes. _So sorry. How can I help?_

I shake my head, already blushing furiously. "It-It's nothing, really," I demur. "I was, um…just coming to see if you had any menstrual rags I could borrow?"

Her eyes go wide but there's something other than surprise behind the expression, something happy and even hopeful. _Cycle started?_ she writes quickly – almost _eagerly_ – and I shake my head.

"Not for a few months now," I tell her. "I, um…I need them for something else."

I'm mentally kicking myself as soon as the words are out. I could have just as easily told her that I felt my menses coming on and wanted the rags just in case.

I blush even deeper. "I, um…" I begin, but there's no way on earth I can say any of this out loud, so I come alongside her and take the slate from her hands. _I get wet_ _there_ _sometimes around Peeta,_ I write in mortification and turn away so I don't have to see her face when she reads it.

I expect laughter in reply; a giggle or chuckle at the very least, but the only response is her typical comforting silence and a brush of fingertips across my wrist to gently elicit my attention. I turn in dread to meet a sympathetic smile that reaches her beautiful eyes and a short explanation on her slate. _Not bad and not surprising,_ she's written. _It means your body's caught up to your heart._

My blush burns hotter still, creeping down my neck in a prickly rush. "It's _very_ bad," I correct her firmly. "I don't want to ruin any clothes, and what if Peeta found out somehow–?"

She covers my mouth with a hand, reminding me that there are Capitol ears everywhere in this house, but her eyes are strangely mirthful. _Won't stain,_ she assures me, _so no need for rags._ _And I can't imagine how he'd find out, but if he did, I doubt he'd mind._

I shoot her an incredulous look and tug the slate over to me, having no desire to say any of this to a Capitol audience. _He'd think I was on my cycle or that I'd wet myself!_ I write, and this time she _does_ laugh, shaking her head merrily.

 _If he ever has cause to feel it,_ she writes, _it'll feel even better to him than it does to you._

I gape at her in a combination of horror and disbelief that makes her take my face in her hands and plant a sound kiss between my brows. _Not the plan, I know,_ she reassures me. _But that doesn't mean it can't ever happen._

She erases the words with the heel of her hand and adds, _And at the risk of sounding crude, wet is a very good thing for lovers._

I take the slate from her to reply, miserably, _We're not lovers and never will be._

She smiles gently, tracing my cheek with a fingertip. _Your body thinks otherwise,_ she writes. _So for now, please accept it. It's a good and healthy thing,_ _really_ _._

I perk up a little at the word _healthy_ , thinking of how a steady menstrual cycle signifies a certain wholeness of body and how Peeta described the prospect of me being pregnant as _a beautiful completion of healing: the tiny, starving girl, grown healthy and strong and bringing her own child into the world._

"Will…will it help my cycle come back?" I whisper, my voice small and vulnerable as a child's, and Lavinia gathers me to her in a lingering hug, making soothing little noises in her throat.

 _Would be astonished if it wasn't back this month,_ she writes. _Food and safety help so much, and a boy doesn't hurt either._

I shoot her a look and she laughs. _Now go curl up with him so I can go curl up with mine,_ she teases, and demonstratively picks up her bundle again.

I shake my head but can't hold back a smile. I suspect Pollux is lovely to cuddle with, all strong arms and broad chest and whiskers, and a woman planning on a more intimate interlude probably wouldn't be bringing extra warm clothes.

"Should I wait till closer to lunchtime to come to the shop?" I ask carefully. "Or would it be better if I came over early and wrapped up around lunch?"

She makes an exasperated, if amused, sound in her throat and hefts the blankets into my arms for one final reply. _Come and go as you please,_ she writes. _Husband has been advised to keep things quiet and out of sight._

"That's not fair, though," I tell her, not because I have any desire to repeat this afternoon's experience but because it seems so awful and even Capitol-like to tell a besotted pair of Avoxes that they can't even be affectionate in the sight of others. "Maybe –" I lean in to whisper in her ear: "For pity's sake, you can _kiss_ and things around me if you want, and I'll do my best to stay out of your rooms."

She raises one dark brow, playfully indicating where we are, as she takes back the pile, and I scowl in reply. "I had a good reason this time," I remind her, "or at least, an understandable one."

I follow her down to the second floor and am halfway to the end of the hall when I recall, with a sudden, audible pang of guilt, my night companion, who I've managed to forget almost entirely this evening. "I forgot something," I tell Lavinia needlessly, "don't wait for me," and bolt back to my room, dropping the fox fur to the floor in my panic. I haven't done anything at all to prepare for him tonight, my silent sweetheart who covers me with furs and leaves me precious wild gifts while expecting nothing of me in return.

The warming pan is propped against the stone mantle, cold and empty, so I reluctantly scratch warming his covers from my nightly routine, opting instead to build the fire a little higher and lay an extra fur over his side of the bed. I can't exactly fetch him a bedtime snack from the kitchen so I go to my drawer of precious things, intent on a handful of holiday chestnuts or ribbon candy to fill our bird's nest, and spot it with relief and delight: the impossible orange that he tied with a sweetheart ribbon and tucked into my palm, which I'd resolved to split it with him tonight, peel and all. I slice it carefully with the knife I keep in my hobby room and nestle it into the perfect bowl of twigs like one radiant golden egg, then I set the filled nest on his rabbit-skin pillow.

But of course, that's only half the task.

I tote the stool from my dressing table around to his side of the bed and perch there companionably to peel and eat my half of the precious orange; the closest we can come to sharing the experience. After Peeta's lemon feast, the flesh is explosively sweet and so full of juice that it floods my mouth, like a passionate kiss from the setting sun, and I lick my fingers clean of every golden drop.

To my surprise, there are three hard white seeds in my half, which after careful thought I decide to leave for my companion, soaking in my water glass from the bathroom, and the small heap of pith and peel as well. Perhaps he would like to plant them, or try at least, seeing the possibility of his very own orange tree in three stubborn little seeds, and the peels, flavorful as they are, might serve as a fine fertilizer in this forbidding season.

 _My one feeble gift might prove to be many,_ I think happily, and bend to press a kiss to his pillow. There's a faint, pleasant odor amid the lingering musk of rabbit, something soft and spicy and almost _familiar_ that makes my belly clench, not unlike the way it does around Peeta, and I straighten with a start.

Am I _attracted_ to my night companion?

 _You don't even know if he's human!_ clamors a frantic voice in my head – but of course, I _do_. I've felt his hands and lips, even his tears as he kissed the crown of my head on New Year's night. I've heard him sigh and chuckle and weep.

No bird, however mighty, could lift a fur from a wooden chest to drape over a shivering girl. And no bear, however dexterous, could tie a ribbon around an orange.

Maybe this explains my dreams. In my most unguarded moments, I'm shielded from loneliness, cold, and nightmares by this invisible masculine presence, all soft breath and gentle silence, and during my waking hours I'm engulfed by the nourishment and nurture that is solid, vibrant, _beautiful_ Peeta Mellark.

My awakening body never stood a chance.

But is it more than that? More than the rousing of a dormant female body in response to a fertile male presence, and an invisible one at that?

Can I possibly _love_ my night companion?

It's unthinkable, surely, and yet falling for him is far less reprehensible than loving and longing after unavailable Peeta, and more hopeful too. After all, my companion and I share a bed every night – or at least a portion thereof – and have already exchanged sweetheart gifts and ribbons.

I touch the rabbit-skin pillow with trembling fingers and realize, with a troubled little shiver, that my night companion unmistakably loves _me_. I think I knew it on New Year's night when he wept over the gift of the pillow and its – unintentional? – sweetheart ribbon and answered it with tear-dampened kisses, but it was undeniable the following morning when I woke with his ribbon-wrapped orange tucked into my hand.

He accepts my gifts, however crude or secondhand, and responds with fairy tokens from the woods and always, _always_ , he tends to my comfort.

He _loves_ me.

I recoil from the pillow, flushed and suddenly breathless, and carry the stool back to the safety of my side of the room.

I'm sharing a bed with a man who _loves_ me. A man too shy or patient to act on that love; to press me for any sort of gift or gesture in return, but who undeniably loves – even _adores_ – me all the same.

I can't encourage this. I shouldn't encourage this.

_But I love him too._

It dawns in me like a quiet sunrise. I don't know what, if anything, can ever come of this love, and strangely, I don't care if it's never more than this: shared bedcovers and wild gifts left on each other's pillow; maybe an annual sweetheart ribbon on New Year's night. This is enough – _more_ than enough. For as long as it lasts, I'm spending more and more of my night hours with Peeta, and when I'm finally compelled to part from him my companion steps in to lie beside me; to warm me with his presence and his silent, unpresuming love.

It's _better_ than enough. It's as close to perfection as could be imagined in my hopeless situation.

I creep back to my companion's side of the room, wary as a wild thing, and for the first time, I sit on the edge of the bed; so cautiously, as though it might leap out from under me or crumble to dust beneath my weight. "I love you too," I whisper, tracing the mouth of the bird's nest with its sweet, sunny gift. "I don't know what more I can give you or if you even _want_ more than that – or if you even want _that_ – but…you have my love, for whatever it's worth."

I bend and kiss the pillow once more but this time I linger to rest my cheek against the fur, steadying the nest with a hand. " _Oh,_ how I love you," I sigh, and slowly get to my feet.

I rewrap myself in my fox coverlet, subdued but not sad, and make my way downstairs. I've been away so long that all the food and dishes have been cleaned up and spirited away, save for a small plate of tarts, sweet buns, and cheese – an after-dinner addition from the icebox – and two steaming mugs; hot chocolate, by all appearances. Our picnic has been transformed into a nest of wool and furs, with Peeta's bearskin laid over the top to be burrowed beneath, and Peeta himself is dressed in pajamas and perched a little restlessly on the edge of the sofa, waiting for me.

"Hey," he says, coming over to me as soon as I appear, his face almost slack with relief. "I thought maybe you'd changed your mind – which is entirely okay, you know. I heard the tub," he explains. "Would you rather take a bath and just go to bed? I can run you a proper one; it won't take long –"

I shake my head and melt against him almost before he's opened his arms. "I just wanted to wash up a little," I tell him. "I want to be with you."

"Hey," he says again, even softer, and gently eases my face back from his throat, angling my chin so he can meet my eyes. "Are you okay, little sweetheart?"

"Of course I'm okay," I assure him, and he blinks in surprise.

"Oranges," he says curiously. "Were my lemons so underwhelming you had to cleanse your palate with a nice sweet orange?"

It never occurred to me that he might smell the fruit on my breath and I'm mortified by the implication. It looks very much as though I forsook his costly lemon feast to hide away in my bedroom and stuff myself with oranges – and worse than that, I can't tell him where it came from or why I had to eat it when I did.

So I opt for Pollux's explanation. "Fairies," I reply gravely. "Fairies, erm…left me a special magic orange and wouldn't let me go downstairs until I'd eaten it."

"Aren't you supposed to avoid fairy food as a rule?" Peeta wonders, his eyes mirthful, and I butt my head against his chest in playful exasperation.

"Yes, but this one was supposed to make me a very fine storyteller," I explain. "And since I owe you a very good story tonight –"

"Every story you tell me is sheer magic," he murmurs, nosing at my head till I look up at him again, then he pecks a determined little kiss between my eyebrows. "I'm inclined to believe you're a fairy yourself – their very queen, no less – and the orange was brought to you as tribute."

"Don't tease me," I warn.

"I would never," he says huskily, leaning in to brush my nose with his. "You're a lethal wild thing and I adore you. What part of that would ever entice me to tease you?"

I nip his nose in reply with the very edges of my teeth, like any good besotted vixen. "See that you don't forget it," I reply. "I may be small but I'm perfectly capable of devouring you whole, gander mine."

"Of that I have no doubt, and to it I have no objection," he answers softly, and I sink against him with a wordless croon, parting the fox fur that surrounds me so I can wrap it around us both.

Peeta's chin comes to rest atop my head with a long, shuddering sigh. "Is this too much, Katniss?" he murmurs.

"Too much of what?" I answer, burrowing greedily into his warmth, half-drunk on his nearness with every intention of drinking deeply of it for the next hour or more.

"Too much…well, _me_ ," he says, to my surprise. "I know you're solitary – I love that about you – and I'd hate if I was making you uncomfortable with all this…this closeness and touching."

I give a sad chuckle against his chest. _If you only knew,_ I think. _How much more of you I want. How much closer I want you. I want you so deep inside me that the line between our bodies – our_ beings _– is not merely blurred but forgotten._

Aloud I say only, "Never. Being close to you is like nourishment, and I've been hungry so long."

He makes a soft sound, almost a sob, and hugs me tightly to him. "Oh Katniss," he whispers. "Oh, Katniss, Katniss, _Katniss_ : it's the same for me too."

I don't know why I didn't realize it sooner. My sweet boy, so eager to kiss and cuddle and hold, is _starving_ for touch just as, not so long ago, I was starving for food. Unless I miss my guess, he's _never_ been touched by his elusive sweetheart, save for that swift peck on the cheek before his Games, and of course, he's known everything but affection from his own mother. I can scarcely bear to think of the ordeal of his amputation – the agony, the grief, the brisk efficiency of cold doctors' hands – of how desperately he must be aching to be comforted of that terrible wound, and yet he still offers touch at every juncture, freely giving away what he needs so desperately to survive. No wonder he's accepted so many of my kisses, nips, and nuzzles – and begged me to save the rest for special occasions. My starving boy is gobbling up all the touch I'm willing to give him and periodically forcing himself to save some for later, despite how badly he wants – no, _needs_ – it, in case the pantry should run dry.

I don't know where I find the nerve, let alone the strength. I curl a leg around his hip and heft myself with a little hop, enough to hook the other leg around him – effectively climbing his torso with my thighs – and bring myself flush against his belly, twining my legs behind him. His arms slip down to cradle my backside, almost instinctively, and I let my fur fall away as I take his sweet, stunned face in my hands.

"Maybe," I whisper. "Maybe we can touch each other well and whole again."

I want to kiss his mouth so badly that I almost can't breathe but this time, somehow, I know I need his permission. I'm offering…I don't know precisely _what_ I'm offering. All the touch he could ever dream of, I suppose; a veritable feast of physical comfort, including and extended to lovemaking, if that's what he wants – which I know he doesn't and I could never in a thousand years articulate in an offer – but there's every possibility that he'll refuse, or ration me, and I understand both responses all too well. Even the poorest bristle at accepting charity and they never, _ever_ consume everything on their table, even if they have every expectation of more coming tomorrow. Not even the night before – or the morning of – Parcel Day.

"Oh _Katniss_ ," he rasps, and there's unmistakable pain in his eyes. "That…that would be so _wonderful_ , but…"

"But?" I prompt miserably, my heart already in my stomach, and I'd pull my legs free of his hips if he wasn't still cradling my backside so securely, keeping me snug against him.

"But… _slowly_?" he croaks. "I-I mean – a little at a time, or –"

"I'm hurting you," I whisper, and struggle against his embrace, but this time he doesn't let go.

"No," he says, but so tenderly. " _Never,_ Katniss."

He carries me to the cuddle-nest, turns back the bearskin with his foot, and lays me in the warm hollow beneath, then he retrieves my fallen fox fur to drape over the bearskin and crawls beneath both to wrap himself around me, curling his own strong legs about my hips and enfolding me in his arms. "Katniss, you are every good and lovely thing that's ever happened to me," he croons against my brow, his fingers trailing the length of my back in a manner so exquisite it almost brings me to tears. "You are compassion and wildness all at once; furs and fairy tales and moonlight. If it was in my power, I would never refuse anything you offered me."

I catch it in his voice then: warning and a shadow of fear, and find confirmation in his eyes.

The Capitol is involved in this in some way.

For reasons I can't begin to guess, something about my intimacy with Peeta is of interest to them, and if we do _too much_ – whatever that means – something terrible will befall one or, more likely, _both_ of us.

Is their cruelty so absolute that they won't even allow a first-year Victor to find a little comfort in the arms of a friend?

Now I think of it, no one ever really talks about a Victor's family and friends, especially once their Victory Tour is over. Dashing Victors like Finnick Odair are periodically seen to cavort with wealthy, glittering lovers in the Capitol, but no one's ever mentioned a wife or children or even a sweetheart back home; the very things you'd expect of a handsome Victor in the prime of his life.

Does some unspoken rule forbid a Victor to find love at home, or is it simply that any object of their affections becomes subject to the same Capitol scrutiny and therefore additional dangers? In which case the only way for a Victor to protect their loved ones would be to keep apart from them.

For the first time I wonder whether Haymitch Abernathy once had a girl he adored as entirely as Peeta loves his own sweetheart and the crass, filthy creature he has become is the result of 24 years of being kept apart from her by rules or threats – while, of course, conveying a new pair of children to their brutal, televised deaths every summer.

"Oh, Peeta," I whisper. "I won't let that happen to you."

He presses two fingers against my lips, so gently – the first time he's ever physically curbed my speech – and brushes a kiss between my eyes. "Nothing's going to happen to me," he assures me, and it's so convincing I almost believe him. "Unless, of course, I expire of too much comfort and affection at your hands," he adds teasingly, and genuinely so, and I nip his fingertips before he can snatch them away.

"What's 'too much'?" I ask, licking my lips in fox-fashion; greedy for another bite of lemon-soaked gander.

He contemplates the question, and me, for longer than I expect. "Can I tell you when it happens?" he says at last, very softly. "Or _if_ it happens, for that matter?"

"And in the meantime, I can nibble at you as much as I like?" I reply. "It's going to be a long cold winter, by all accounts, and a hunting vixen needs good, solid nourishment."

"Stocky nourishment?" he wonders, his eyes merry. "Fat, foolish, _golden_ nourishment, by chance?"

He's traded his downy yellow sweater for a thermal shirt in a warm mustard-gold, the significance of which just now dawns on me, and I trace the collar with a grin. "That would be a very fine place to start," I reply, and dip my head for an inquisitive lick at the base of his throat, making him gasp.

"Too much, vixen mine!" he yelps; playfully, but the undercurrent of panic is clear. "Anyway, if you get too greedy in that area you might nip an artery and end up with a gander that's fit for nothing but the oven, and then who would you torment the whole winter through?"

I sit up beneath the weight of bearskin and fox fur to contemplate his strong, beautiful body, still curled toward me like a golden half-moon. "Where would you prefer I start, doomed thing?" I inquire, not particularly upset by the relocation, and his eyes darken and soften all at once.

"Anywhere," he says huskily. "Anywhere you like. I'm your captive, after all."

I allow myself ten seconds to devour him with my eyes, especially those places I can never touch in a million years, and then I scoot back beneath the furs to pursue the part of him I've been aching for almost from the first: his precious wounded leg.

He jolts up in realization before my hand reaches the hem of his trousers. "No, Katniss," he urges. "You don't want to –"

"Didn't you promise me your prosthesis?" I remind him softly, circling his knee with my fingertips. "I can't very well take it out to carve if you're still wearing it."

"Please, Katniss," he whispers, curling his hand around mine to stop the caress but keeping it there, pressed against him, not pushing me away. "You don't want to see this."

"You're right, I don't," I reply. "I want to touch and hold and kiss it – unless that will hurt you in some way?"

He closes his eyes with a long, shuddering moan and draws several shallow breaths, finally shaking his head. "It-It's _ugly,_ " he warns, releasing my hand to reach for the hem with both hands and looking up at me, giving me one last chance to change my mind.

"No part of you could ever be ugly," I counter, almost a growl, and kiss his knee for encouragement. "Please let me, Peeta."

He draws a shaky breath and carefully hikes the trouser leg to bare a calf and shin of pale flesh-colored plastic ending in a stockinged foot, and I realize all at once that I've never seen him without socks. I don't know if he keeps a sock on his prosthetic foot for traction or to conceal its artificial nature or if his real foot simply gets cold and it's more practical to wear both socks, but I resolve here and now that in these private moments we share, there will hereafter be no socks. I'll divest him of the left one in a bit but at the moment I'm riveted on his strong, skillful hands cuffing his trousers just above the knee with the ease of much practice. He dips a finger into the ankle of the sock, causing a soft click and a muffled popping sound in reply, and the prosthesis eases free of his leg.

"You're sure?" he croaks, holding the false limb in place, giving me one last chance to change my mind.

I respond by cupping the cold, lifeless limb in both hands and guiding it off what remains of his own lower leg: a blunt pink stump of smooth skin and bone, about as long as his hand is wide.

" _Oh…_ " I breathe.

Last night I held this in my hand; fell asleep with it cradled like a treasure in my palm, and now I can barely stop myself descending on it in caresses, kisses, and tears.

It's _beautiful_. Heartbreaking, to think of the powerfully muscled calf and strong, steady foot that was there before, and yet _so_ incredibly beautiful.

I set the prosthesis absently to one side and cradle the stump in both hands, sinking down to stroke its impossibly soft skin with my cheek. Peeta whimpers sharply, his leg jerking in my grasp, but he doesn't struggle to free himself or push me away, which is very well indeed, because now that I've got hold of this precious thing, I don't think I'll ever be able to let go. I nuzzle it with my nose, cheekbones, even my eye sockets, curious and affectionate all at once, and then my mouth takes over. The limb smells of antiseptic, sweat, and stale plastic but underneath is cream and cloves and honeyed boy-musk, and I drink it all in with kisses both hungry and tender; here parting my lips for a damp offering, there closing them for a gentler one.

 _I love you,_ my mind intones with every press of my lips. _Oh, how I love you._

Peeta slumps back against the pillows with a moan and I take the slackening of his leg as a delicious cue to cradle the whole limb in my arms, lifting beneath his thigh to bring his knee near my face. It's broad and rosy and dusted with hairs the color of chick's down, and I kiss every muscle and tendon and bone; above, below, even dipping my face into the sensitive valley behind. He was so strong, my sweet boy, his body fighting furiously to keep this knee, and the powerful thigh muscles that attach there.

I kiss and kiss and kiss what remains of his lower leg in an almost fevered fashion, consuming pain and grief and neglect and pouring out tenderness, compassion, and love. If I stop, even to draw breath, he might finally pull away or chide me in a gentle manner that would hurt even more than a physical withdrawal, and so I steal quick gasps against his skin, flooding my lungs with _warm boy_ and _Capitol hospital_ all at once; the _real_ and _not-real_ scents of this precious, perfect limb.

 _I'll bathe you,_ I promise him silently, _every day and night – and noon, if necessary. We'll take off this dreadful thing with its Capitol stench and I'll wash them away from your precious leg. They have no place in our life and even less on your body. Let me take you back from them, sweet boy. Let me soothe your hurts and make you smell like home, like bread and honey and woodsmoke and wine._

A wet, ragged sound – or rather, a series of them – shakes me out of my reverie of adoration; a sound unmistakable and yet nigglingly reminiscent of something very particular that I can't quite place.

My boy is _sobbing._ Rough, ugly, wracking sobs, muffled by an arm thrown across his face but still fighting their way from his chest.

It's not uncommon for Peeta to cry but I haven't seen him _sob_ since the arena, and it cuts my heart in two.

I ease his leg down onto the coverlet heaped beneath us and crawl out of my fur-burrow, desperate to apologize and yet reluctant to interrupt him in this moment of raw sorrow.

But I love him and he's hurting, so there's really no decision to make at all.

I lie alongside him and wrap my arms around his middle, providing comfort that is undeniable yet unobtrusive, and his own arms swoop down to engulf me like the wings of the sun.

" _Why?_ " he whispers, burying his damp face in my crown.

"You _know_ why," I whisper back, because if I have to try and rephrase it one more time the truth will finally spill out, and these words make him sob harder still.

"Shh, sweet boy," I croon, and inch up his body to tuck his face into the curve of my neck. "Don't you know how precious you are?"

"Not to you," he rasps without hesitation. "Every time you give me a gift, or show me a new kind of affection, it's even harder to believe than before."

"I brought you a basket of pretty pinecones," I recall suddenly. "I forgot to give them to you before supper. Would you rather have them than… _this_?" I wonder softly, combing my fingertips gently against his scalp. "Because that would be okay –"

"Oh Katniss, when will you understand how very precious _you_ are?" he groans, lifting his face to meet my eyes; his own wide and hot and red with tears. "I found your pinecones while I was cleaning up and it was every bit as thrilling as catching you at the chopping block on New Year's Eve, or finding the shoe and stocking full of treats outside my bedroom door on New Year's morn. I even told myself those presents weren't for me so I wouldn't get my hopes up.

"A basket of pretty pinecones would have been so much more than enough," he goes on, "and then you shower me with songs and tales and _kisses_ – _so_ many kisses," he says hoarsely. "You overwhelm me with gifts and affection, both precious beyond measure, and I weep because it's wonderful and impossible, because I love it and…and I don't want to lose it," he concludes, his voice so small and vulnerable that it spurs a prickle of tears in my own eyes. "You make me – make _everything_ – feel so incredibly _good,_ and I cry because I never thought I would have that, or…or even _feel_ that."

I take his face in my hands and cover every last inch of it with lingering, deliberate kisses. "I hate your sweetheart," I whisper, kissing the salty corners of his eyes, "if loving her has brought you to this."

He laughs brokenly in reply. "Oh Katniss, she's done anything _but_ hurt me," he says. "She's a fierce thorned bud that I water with gifts and nourish with the light of my love, and every now and again I get a breath of her petals and am overcome, both by the bliss of the moment and the hope of what more might one day be."

 _Still the prince loves his proud rose,_ I think sadly. But she never knew the pleasure of being tamed, no matter what the fox said, nor would the prince ever truly enjoy the reward of his patience. Not like lush warm fur beneath his hands or a damp snout nosing his ear or a velvet tongue-stroke on his nose.

"You'll get your rose-bride, little prince," I promise him, even though it breaks my heart. "But in the meantime, could you be content to play with a tamed fox?"

"I could be content for the rest of my days with a tamed fox," he whispers, and I cover his mouth with mine before he can add anything to detract from or contradict this golden sliver of hope.

 _I will make the rest of your days so wonderful, little prince,_ my still lips promise as they melt against his. _I will bring you jewel-bright apples from our tree for your breakfast, ripe wheat from the fields for your luncheoning-bread, and stolen chickens from the farms for the fine fireside supper we shall share. We shall romp and laugh in snowdrifts and cattails and wildflowers alike and I shall perch on your heart and lick your face with joy whenever I triumph over you at our games. We shall be playfellows until you grow lonesome for younglings and then I shall shed my foxskin and become your mate, filling your cold bed with my warmth and love and your house with our merry golden kits._

" _Oh_ , vixen mine," he sighs against my mouth. "Surely you would rather have a boy-fox to hunt and chase and gambol with you in the woods."

"On the contrary," I reply, leaning back to give his nose a tender chiding nip. "I want a _goose_ -boy: a foolish, lonely gander who will tend our nest while I hunt and serve me cozy baked sweets upon my return and wrap me in his golden wings."

"I can do that," he promises softly, " _all_ of that," and curls me snugly to him as proof, tugging us both deeper into the downy hollow of our nest.

"And what shall you ask in return for your warm wings?" I tease. "They are, after all, no mean prize, least of all to a scrawny-limbed vixen with only her skin to keep out the cold."

"The honor of holding that vixen is payment enough," he whuffles against my hair. "When will you understand that, sweetling? I want absolutely nothing in payment from you."

"Oho! Not true!" I crow and roll up to press him onto his back, my arms folded across his chest. "You asked me for a story and a song in exchange for building this fine nest–"

"Strictly speaking, a story _or_ a song," he corrects breathlessly. "And it was still far too high a price. I'll be nest-building for you till June at the least, repaying that balance."

"You _like_ my silly songs," I needle him playfully, grinning. "Maybe I'll sing you another one and get an extra dessert for the next three months–"

"If you sing for me again today, I strongly suspect my heart will burst," he protests, but his eyes are wistful. "Tell me the story you promised and I'll give you your three months of extra desserts – or anything else you want."

"Half your kingdom and a throne to rule it from?" I recall.

"That and more," he agrees without hesitation. "Anything you want. _Everything_ you want."

I unfold my arms to lay my palm on his chest, edging around with my fingertips till I find his heartbeat. "Your down, your flesh, and your still-beating heart?" I ask quietly, and receive a long shaky sigh in reply.

"You know, for a tough trader, you really haven't grasped how to bargain with someone who adores you," he says huskily. "You're supposed to ask for difficult tasks and rare, costly presents–"

"I don't care about difficult tasks or costly presents," I reply, dismissing these meaningless treasures without a second thought. "All I want is you."

"Well," he says softly, tracing my cheek with a fingertip, "here I am."

I lower my face to his chest and nuzzle insistently at his racing heart, as though it's a ground squirrel frantically evading my snout beneath a thick groundcover of fallen leaves and if I pounce in just the right spot I'll come up with a wriggling prize to take home for my supper – or a warm little companion to curl myself around all winter long.

"Mine," I inform him with a deliberate glance and settle on the second course of action, inching down to lay over him, my cheek pillowed on his chest – not covering his heart, just near enough for me to kiss it whenever I like – and my own heart resting on the soft hollow of belly between the branches of his ribcage.

"Yours," he agrees, resting a trembling hand on my head. "Always and entirely yours."

His legs – one long and ending in a strong stockinged foot, the other ending just below the knee and even more beautiful – curl around mine, and I trace his right thigh till I reach the stump, hovering uncertainly over the back of my leg, as though he's reluctant to rest it on me. "Does it hurt?" I wonder. "I mean: to touch things with it?"

He moans quietly; at the contact or the question, I can't be sure. "Before last night, with very minimal exceptions, the only things that touched my leg were bathwater and bedsheets," he says hoarsely. "And until then, I thought they felt pretty good."

I lift my head to meet his eyes, which are dark and wide and almost desperately hungry. "Peeta," I whisper, "if I touch your leg again, will it make you cry?"

"Probably," he whispers brokenly. "But I wish so badly that you would, just the same."

I kiss his eyes closed, so gently, and descend once more into the plush depths of our fur-burrow, following the contour of his right leg till I reach the stump. "So beautiful," I murmur, cradling it in my small hands and pressing a wet kiss to its blunt end.

Peeta's thigh contracts sharply in response but he shakes his head at my questioning look. "Please don't stop," he says raggedly. "Feels _so_ good. Everything you do feels so good."

I consider this for a moment then wriggle down under the furs to pop up on the other side of the nest, directly across from Peeta, so I can take both of his lower legs into my lap. Then I peel the sock down his broad left foot and toss it somewhere in the direction of the sofa. "No socks in the nest," I inform him, at once teasing and tender, and I scoot back a little further to lift my newest prize for its own cascade of kisses.

His foot – large, rosy-pale, and sprinkled across its toe-tops with curly blond hairs – is so strong and beautiful that I ache to think of the month we've wasted with it hidden away beneath stout shoes and thick woolen socks. "Also mine," I inform him without looking up, preoccupied as I am tugging at each toe in turn with nibbling minnow-kisses, and he answers with a shaky laugh.

"Entirely yours," he assures me breathily. "I shudder to think who would dare to stand between a greedy vixen and her gander-toes."

Of course, we both know perfectly well who stands between us, but I dismiss her from my mind for the moment. Whoever Peeta's sweetheart is, there's no doubt in my mind that she'll consider herself above kissing his one remaining foot, let alone nipping at these five precious toes like choice delicacies.

I carefully angle his foot outward to present the heel and tender inner ankle for kisses and can't resist edging his trouser leg a little higher with my nose, kissing my way into warm musky shadows where his leg hair grows thick and soft.

"I'm hard-pressed to decide which leg I like best," I murmur as though in a dream, stroking his foot with greedy fingers, again and again and again, as I lay it back in my lap then turn eagerly back to the stump. "Both of them – _all_ of you – is so beautiful."

Peeta inhales raggedly and I look up across the expanse of furs to find fresh tear tracks on his cheeks, glistening gold by firelight. "Oh, sweet boy!" I gasp, my bliss at being given the freedom to explore his beautiful body vanishing in the face of the grief my touch has caused, and I'm over the furs and alongside him in two heartbeats.

"You should have told me it was too much," I soothe, kissing his hot eyes, and he turns back the furs to pull me under beside him.

"Apparently I'm even more starved than I realized," he sniffles. "I-I don't want you to stop."

"And I don't want you to cry," I answer softly, bringing his face to my chest like a child's. "I feel like I'm hurting you."

" _Never,_ " he assures me, rubbing his cheek against me as he roots out the most comfortable spot. "But all the same, I think you're right to go slow."

"A boy learns patience where a bird learns trust," I remind him, kissing the top of his head. "Surely he would be overwhelmed by too much affection too soon."

"Depends on how long he's waited," he replies strangely. "Anyway, you did all right with your dove."

I laugh lightly and kiss him again. "That's because _she_ tamed _me_ , sweet boy," I explain. "For all I know, she's back in her nest having nervous convulsions after an afternoon of kisses and cuddles and pets from a wild huntress."

"An understandable response," he says, and it doesn't quite sound like he's teasing.

"I can tell you about her instead of the story I'd planned, if you like," I offer, but he shakes his head against me.

"Breakfast will be soon enough," he decides. "Tonight I want to hear the story you wanted to tell so badly that you were willing to eat a fairy orange to make it even more delightful. I have a feeling there might be birds in that one too," he teases, "or with any luck, a fox."

I chuckle. "No fox, alas, but it's actually about a bird – _two_ birds, really. Have you ever heard of an oriole, Peeta?"

He lifts his head to meet my eyes, his own narrowed in something halfway between curiosity and suspicion. "I fed them this past summer when they weren't feeling aloof," he replies slowly. "I'd never seen an orange bird before, and their breast feathers are my favorite color in all the world: sort of a soft sunset-orange."

"Is that so?" I say, unsurprised by my boy's favorite color – especially in light of his bedroom – but thrilled to finally know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I plan to make use of this knowledge as often as possible, not least in scheming up gifts for his birthday.

"I wanted them to come to the garden so badly," he goes on. "I wanted to see and hear and paint them, so I put out all kinds of different foods to try and entice them closer, but it turns out there's only one thing they really like."

He's looking at me as though he expects me to know this answer already. "Um…berries?" I guess. "I've never seen an oriole eating, but the colorful summering birds tend to like fruit."

He frowns in puzzlement. "You really don't know?" he wonders. "I thought that was why you chose an oriole story."

I shake my head, even more confused than he is. " _What_ was why?"

"They eat berries," he agrees, "the darker and juicier the better, but they _love_ oranges." He grins at the revelation. "It's the only thing that will bring them past the raspberry patch, and they peck them clean to the peel. One time I took in their empty orange before I'd halved the fresh one and an impatient oriole flew to the kitchen window and rapped on the glass to hurry me – 'I want my orange!'" He laughs at the memory. "I was half-afraid he'd dive-bomb my head when I finally brought it out.

"He didn't," he assures me, "but that was the first and last time I took down an empty orange without a full one in my hand."

"Orioles eat oranges," I muse and try to think if my father ever mentioned this. Considering how costly oranges are, I'm almost certain he never had the opportunity to find out.

"You didn't know," he realizes, coming to the conclusion the same time that I do. "I'm so sorry, Katniss. I thought you chose an oriole story because of all the oranges you've had lately."

I shake my head thoughtfully, appreciating the coincidence nonetheless. "No, but I love the connection and I can't wait to see your orioles when the weather gets warm," I reply. "I chose the story because –" I hesitate a moment to choose my words carefully – "it's about the sun and two ordinary blackbirds who go after something impossible and end up with far more than they bargained for."

Peeta's lips tighten in uncertainty. "This sounds like a cautionary tale," he says. "Does it have a sad ending?"

"Oh no," I reply with a smile, guiding his head down onto my chest once more and pinning it there with a deliberate kiss to the crown. "It's a love story."

* * *

_Long ago, when the earth was little older than a babe in her cradle, there lived two blackbirds; a brother and sister. The boy was bold and the girl was brave, with very little of each other's quality about them; therefore, the brother, so brash in his speech, was cowardly in the face of even modest danger and his sister, though a match for a cougar in courage, was shy and reserved in her manner._

_These birds, so scrawny, poor, and plain, were ridiculed by their plump colorful neighbors and made to live in little woven stocking-nests that hung below the branches where prouder birds made their homes. And one day the bold brother, full to his crop with their mocking, conceived a notion to fly to the sun and steal a billful of gold, so he might gild their nest and perch on the branch above, as proudly as any pretty songbird._

_His sister thought this a foolhardy plan but she did not balk at it, for as I have said, she was as brave as any hunting beast – indeed, braver still, as you shall soon see. She felt the scorn of their neighbors as keenly as her brother and for her own part wondered if, perhaps, a lady-bird from a gilded nest might hope to be courted one day. Of a certain, there were no suitors for a small, plain blackbird in a poor stocking-nest, and she longed for a mate and chicks of her own._

* * *

"I think I know this bird," rumbles Peeta's voice against my chest, deeply amused, and he nuzzles me meaningfully for good measure.

"This happened long ago when the earth was little older than a babe in her cradle," I answer smartly, ignoring the stumble of my heart and the hot surge in my belly at feeling his face between my breasts and relieved beyond measure that he can't see my blush. "You don't know this bird."

"We shall see," he says merrily, pecking my breastbone with a kiss. "Go on."

* * *

_They made predictable preparation for their dangerous journey: namely, the bold brother blackbird strutted past his elegant neighbors, boasting as proudly as you please of what he would soon accomplish while his brave sister alternately slept as much as she could and practiced longer and higher flights, all the while stuffing herself with whatever she could forage to build energy reserves._

* * *

"Oh, for pity's sake, _you don't know this bird!_ " I burst in exasperation before Peeta, whose chuckles have escalated through the last passage, can interject his thoughts. "I know she _sounds_ a bit like an intrepid Seam girl –"

"Not just any Seam girl," he breaks in. "A very small, clever, and brave one with feathers so silken-black they glint blue in the sunlight."

"I shall bite you in a minute," I warn, my face on fire, and he raises his head to grin shamelessly at me.

"You know, for such a lethal little thing, you really haven't grasped how to threaten someone who adores you," he teases. "I thought we'd firmly established how much I enjoy your nips."

I consider this, narrowing my eyes and trying desperately not to think about all the tender rosy places on this boy that I could nip. "Then I shall never nip you again," I decide. "And for good measure, I shan't finish the story either."

Unfortunately, this threat is far more effective than I anticipated. Peeta's grin switches off like an electric light and he scrambles off me, crawling some distance away to curl on his side, facing the fireplace. "I'm sorry," he says meekly. "I-I won't interrupt anymore."

Naturally, I spoon my small body around him and nuzzle consolingly at his neck, bringing a hand to the stump of his leg for additional comfort. "You poor thing," I soothe, and only faintly in jest. "Are my stories and nips so _very_ important to you – or do you just really love to talk?"

To my immense relief, this wins a quiet laugh, albeit a slightly pathetic one. "All of the above," he replies sheepishly. "Maybe, um…do you suppose we might name the birds?" he suggests. "That might cut back on the, erm, interruptions."

I consider this. It's a reasonable enough concession that my father often made when telling stories to or around Prim, who thought that giving the characters names, especially everyday ones, made fairy tales a little more real, whereas I preferred the players to be nameless: _the prince, the fox,_ or _the huntress-moon._ Somehow that extra sliver of mystery made the stories even more magical, and judging by the tales Peeta has shared with me thus far, he feels the same.

"Fair enough," I tell him, "but considering how long it took to name my bird this afternoon, you should probably take charge of naming these two."

"Katniss and Gale," he declares without hesitation and a grin so wide I can hear it in his voice.

I ignore the first, half-expected, to cut down the second. "Gale is not some...some bold _peacock!_ " I sputter.

Peeta chuckles deeply, as though at a secret joke. "You've clearly never paid attention to him outside the mayor's mansion," he replies.

I shake my head a little, utterly perplexed. Is he implying that Gale showed off somehow when we went to the mayor's back door to trade? He's never dealt or even interacted directly with the mayor himself as far as I know, just Madge, and he's more bristly and curt with her than he is toward anyone else; even vile old Cray. Could that be what Peeta's referring to: Gale's exaggerated show of hostility around Madge?

I scowl, misliking that Peeta seems to have noticed something in Gale that I've missed. "And he's _certainly_ not cowardly in the face of danger," I remind him needlessly, but he has an immediate counter to this as well.

"Did he ever ask you to walk out with him?" he wonders. "Not in the woods: in town, like a courting couple."

I screw up my face at the very thought. "Of course not!" I retort.

"Coward!" he says triumphantly, as though the answer to that one question explains everything. "Or if that isn't sufficient proof, we can talk about the mayor's mansion some more."

I rest my chin on his shoulder, confused and a little unsettled by these implications. I haven't thought about Gale – _really_ thought about him – in an eternity and it's troubling to think I might have been so blind. I know folk from both sides of town speculated that Gale and I would end up together but we never spoke of it, not even to make fun of their theories, and I never once considered that my gruff, taciturn hunting partner might have wanted any of that – courting, a toasting, perhaps even children – with me.

There would have been a practicality to such a marriage, I suppose, with us already hunting together and helping to sustain each other's families, but that wouldn't have mattered two pins in making the prospect more appealing. The idea of nestling with Gale in a heap of furs, of sucking on fingertips with coal dust embedded beneath the nails and softening a hard scowling mouth with teasing kisses, is enough to turn my stomach.

And the idea of Madge ever doing any such thing, let alone Gale longing for her to do so, is so absurd as to be laughable. No, if Gale was afraid of me, it was my bowshots or temper he dreaded, not a romantic rejection, and as far as Madge is concerned, he probably thinks she's likeliest to report his illicit trades, especially with her father's strong Capitol connections.

"Well," I attempt one last argument, "he would never embark on something – like, oh, a flight to the sun! – without making preparations."

But I know the answer before Peeta says it: "He _absolutely_ would – if he thought he didn't need them. And he certainly wouldn't let on if he _wasn't_ prepared in some way – not even to you, I'd wager," he remarks.

Gale is surprisingly proud, like most Seam folk, and he has an immodest, if not wholly unjustified, confidence in his abilities. If he was going to attempt something extra daring or dangerous, especially if word had got round about it, the last thing he would do is let on that he wasn't fully prepared in advance, even if that meant going into the challenge unprepared.

I give a disgruntled huff against Peeta's shoulder and tuck my face into the crook of his neck. "I'll give you some of that," I allow, "but I can't use those names for the blackbirds."

His hand covers mine on his leg, toying idly with the fingers. "Fair enough," he concedes, to my surprise. "How about Hawthorne and Greenbrier?"

I snort. "Not Hawthorne and Everdeen?" I wonder dryly.

"Don't be childish, Katniss," he chides. "I'm trying to name a pair of fairytale birds. Hawthorns and greenbriers are both berry-bearing bushes, right? And I know orioles like berries…"

I shake off his hand and bring my own up to his face, which is, as I suspected, creased in a massive grin. "You don't deserve a bedtime story!" I inform him furiously.

"Hey, I'm helping to prepare you for Mellark babies," he counters, with no little amusement. "They're cumbersome and they wheedle – _oh_ , how they wheedle! –and they're so much cleverer than they look –"

"Presumably there will be some good Seam blood in _your_ kids to thin that out," I interject.

"Don't get your hopes up," he warns merrily. "The unexpected cleverness came from Mom's side, actually, which probably made us twice as much trouble as biddable Dad and Uncle Marek."

"In which case you'd better marry someone docile and slightly stupid," I advise him wryly.

"I have every intention of doing nothing of the kind," he declares. "I'm going to marry someone a hundred times cleverer – and slyer – than I am and have twenty babies, each slyer and cleverer than the last. And you will _rue_ the day you agreed to stay here as long as I would have you!" he concludes, practically crowing the words with delight.

"Right, that's it," I tell him. "I'm going upstairs – "

Before I have a chance to even pretend to attempt this, Peeta turns in my arms with a playful roar, pins me flat on my back beneath the full weight of his powerful body, and proceeds to pepper my neck with wet whuffling kisses that make me squeal and flail beneath him.

"You'll do no such thing," he informs me with a grin so wide it crinkles his eyes to slits. "You're going to stay right here and tell me what happened to Hawthorne and Greenbrier."

"They're birds flying up to steal a piece of the sun, Peeta," I pant. "Exactly how do you _think_ it ended? With two roast blackbirds, fit for a pie!"

"Oho! Not true!" he crows in a perfect imitation of me not ten minutes ago. "Katniss, you're telling a story from when the world was new about how two ordinary blackbirds became colorful and remained so to this day. Even if they _did_ catch on fire, I'm pretty sure that's not the end of the story," he observes. "Not to mention, you already promised me this tale was neither cautionary nor sad – and that it was a love story to boot, which almost certainly means a grand romance and orange-bellied chicks are still to come."

I glower up at him, but with so much affection my heart aches. "I dislike you intensely," I grumble.

His face falls. "Would you rather just go to bed?" he offers, suddenly so shy and gentle that my brain twinges trying to process it. Surely he knows we've been playing all this time; that while my exasperation with his silliness and wheedling is genuine, my frustration is not. I fell in love with patient, gentle, soft-spoken Peeta but this feisty, playful variation is adorable beyond measure. I love his impulsiveness; his strong body immobilizing me with its warm weight as his greedy wet mouth devours my neck or my toes, and I can't bear to think of that going away, let alone because of me.

"Of course not," I tell him, as plainly as I can. "I want to stay down here and tell you the rest of the story while we curl together like mousekins in a nest."

His smile returns, cautious and hopeful as just such a mousekin spying a forgotten handful of grain in an empty larder. "And just how do these mousekins curl together?" he wonders, ever so slightly impish.

I swallow the urge to reply that, in order to be proper mousekins – the newborn sort – we have to discard all clothes and nestle skin-to-skin. "They're generally all blind snouts and tiny paws, heaped together in a warm knot," I explain. "So, really, this – " I indicate our position with a nod, as my head is really the only thing I can move at the moment – "isn't too far off."

His smile unfurls like a new shoot in the spring, stretching fragile tendrils toward the sun. "That sounds very fine indeed," he says, "but I'm a little afraid I'll squish my mousekin. And anyway, we have a decided lack of tiny paws here."

He rolls down onto his side, keeping me snug against him, then he reaches between us to find my little hands and bring them to his chest. "Two tiny paws," he counts happily and wraps his arms around me once more. "And two snouts –" he pips my nose with his – "that will grow increasingly blind as we doze off. Will this knot suffice, mousekin mine?"

His arms are curled snugly across my back but our legs are simply pressed together, thigh to thigh, and I want a deeper contact, so I wind my top leg over his and nudge his bottom leg with my knee. "Hitch up a little," I tell him, fully aware that attempting to shift him myself would be like levering a boulder with a twig, and with a grunt he maneuvers himself back over me, just enough that I can wrap my legs around his waist without the bottom one being squashed beneath his weight.

It should be a suffocating position but instead it feels _heavenly_ , not least because it tucks the firm lump between his legs into the empty valley between mine in that exquisite sort of _completion_. I give a slow, experimental rock of my pelvis, just to see if the contact still feels as incredible as I remember, but stop immediately at Peeta's gasp. I know painfully well what this intimacy does to my body – while, doubtless, making him uncomfortable beyond measure – and it would be horrifying if he felt that longing dampness, especially on his private parts.

"H-How's that?" he wonders hoarsely, and I pip his nose with a kiss.

"Almost perfect," I chirp, and reach back to tug up the hem of my shirt, just a little, so his arms slip down onto the bare skin of my waist. His whole body stiffens in a caught breath but I want my own nimble mousekin paws in this nestling knot we've formed, and I fish blindly beneath my back till I find one big warm hand and press it to my skin, winning soft cries from both of us.

Shivers of bliss cascade the length of my spine at the feel of Peeta's palm against my skin and redouble when his other hand timorously joins it; neither of them moving except to splay the fingers, as though he's cautiously trying to touch as much of me as he can. " _Now_ it's perfect," I sigh, tangling my fingers in the front of his shirt.

"Beyond perfect," he whispers, almost a whimper. "Beyond _imagining._ "

I think of my boy's hunger for touch and wonder if it's different or even _better_ to be offered the opportunity _to_ touch – to have someone, even a friend or an animal, who wants to be touched by him in whatever way he wishes. "Y-You can touch me, if you want," I whisper back. "I-I mean…if you wanted, like earlier, when I touched your back…that would be okay."

He draws a slow, shaky breath. "I-I don't want to distract you from your story," he says, but his fingers are already moving against my skin in tiny, eager flickers that make me tremble with anticipation. "I've done plenty of that already."

"I want you to snuggle with me while I tell a bedtime story," I answer lightly, muffling the longing as best I can. "There's a fair amount of movement in snuggling, you know."

"So there is," he replies softly, and combs the fingers of one hand along my spine, making me coo like a lovesick dove at her lover's first preen.

"You can do that all night if you want to," I sigh, and lean up to kiss his forehead. "I'll even call the blackbirds Katniss and Gale."

He chuckles, raggedly but triumphant. "I'll save that victory to cash in on something that really matters," he murmurs, and eases both hands deeper under my shirt, caressing my back with slow swirls of his strong fingers. "Hawthorne and Greenbrier will more than suffice."

"Yes, about that," I croak, not sure how I'm going to resume this tale, let alone complete it, in this state of overwhelming bliss. "You remember my great-granny's last name."

"I remember everything about you, Katniss," he says quietly, stilling his fingers against me. "Haven't you figured that out by now?"

I haven't, obvious though it has rapidly become, and it's still almost impossible to believe, let alone comprehend. I bite back a _why_ because I don't really want to know the answer and settle instead for reassurance. "I like you immensely, Peeta Mellark," I say, kissing his curly head like a child's. "Please keep me forever. I'm a cross little creature with sharp tiny teeth, but at the end of the day I'm surely no more fearsome or obtrusive than a mousekin."

He smiles. "Well, I _am_ surpassing fond of mice," he remarks. "And a storytelling mousekin is the sort of thing a king in an ancient tale would sell all he owned to possess."

"Or that would aid the youngest of three princes in three impossible tasks," I reply, recalling a similar, breathtaking fairy tale from my childhood, only featuring a white cat in the role. "The last being to return home with the loveliest bride in all the world, which would prove to be the mouse herself – who, freed from her animal enchantment, is more beautiful than the Evening Star."

"I want that story tomorrow," he breathes, his eyes soft and very wide.

"Tomorrow is _your_ turn," I remind him playfully. "The king who sold everything for a storytelling mousekin. And the next night, if you're not full to your crop with mice, I'll tell you about the prince who was prepared to marry one."

"I'll _never_ get tired of mice," he assures me, almost ardently. "Especially clever, storytelling ones that are willing to marry the meager third son."

"The third son is always the kind one who shares his black bread and cheese," I point out. "There's nothing meager about such a prospect. The Evening Star should be so lucky."

"I hope she is," he says strangely, "or at least, that she sees it that way," and he settles down to lie half over me, his cheek nestled against mine and his broad hands cupping the tiny wings of my naked shoulder blades. "Tell me about the flight to the sun, little Greenbrier," he murmurs, and I resume the tale in hushed breathlessness.

* * *

 _The day of the journey dawned bright and clear;_ a good omen, _Hawthorne declared to all and sundry, as though the sun himself had blessed their mission, never mind it was to steal a billful of his gold. Meanwhile, prudent Greenbrier consumed the last of her provisions and together they took wing from the highest branch on their tree._

_The sun proved more distant than even Greenbrier had estimated. It seemed they would never reach it, even if they flew for a year without stopping, and the higher they flew the hotter and thicker the air grew about them, till it seemed they flapped their wings in a sea of simmering honey. Hawthorne flagged quickly, unprepared as he was for a flight of such challenge and magnitude, but his pride would not allow him even the thought of giving up. Greenbrier fared somewhat better, thanks to her practice flights and carefully built energy stores, but her small form, however swift, lacked the strength of her brother's superior size. She wearied as well, but she could not give up while her beloved brother risked all, never mind the danger._

_Hotter the air grew and thicker still, till at last the sun roared before them, like a radiant globe of flame, perhaps a hundred wingbeats away. Proud Hawthorne, so bold now that his goal lay in reach, redoubled his efforts and left his sister behind, slogging ahead through the honey-air, but he had not flown twenty wingbeats when a tongue of flame lashed out from the sun and struck him full in the breast, scorching him from throat to underbelly with the heat of a hundred earthly fires._

_Hawthorne cried out as he fell back to Earth, mortally wounded and empty-billed, and little Greenbrier watched in horror, for she wanted to go after her brother, to check his fall and tend his burns as best she could, but she could not let him return to their stocking-hovel beneath the branch, wounded and shamed for life by his failure. So she ducked her tiny head and carried on alone, flapping her wings against the thick hot air again and again and again. The nearer she drew to the sun the hotter the air became, till she was certain her feathers had been singed clean away, but still she flew, wings weak and surely burned bare, till with an exhausted chirp and one last great flap, she flung herself into the blazing heart of the sun._

Here I shall die, _she thought, weary but triumphant._ But perhaps my singed feathers will fall to earth, here and there edged with the sun's own gold, and these my proud brother may use to line his nest.

_But to her astonishment, the heart of the sun was not a roaring furnace but a gentle hearth, its heat no fiercer than a cheery cook-fire on Midwinter's Night, and equally welcome to a weary traveler, and the little blackbird was engulfed not in fiery death but love; sweet golden love, hidden like a jewel at the very heart of the blazing orb. She felt her spent form renewed, as though the mere presence of such love was rest and nourishment abundant, and a voice, from everywhere and nowhere at once, whispered tenderly, "Welcome, brave darling one."_

_It was the sun himself who addressed her, distant and disembodied and yet as near as a breath on her cheek, and her tiny heart tremored in her breast. "For the honor of your foolish brother, you risked agonizing death," he said. "I shall give Hawthorne what he desires and more besides, not for his sake but for your own. Henceforth he will be the most striking and admired of forest birds, with a breast and belly as bright as the flame which cut him down in his pride. He will follow me southward in the cold months and feast upon the fruits of a warmer clime all winter long, and he will father many fine strong chicks, the sons like him in their raiment of black and orange and the daughters lovelier still, as you have now become."_

_Greenbrier gazed down at herself, as she had thus far been reluctant to do, expecting singe and smoke and the deadened flesh of the cruelest burns, but every last feather on her form was still whole and hale, from her soft underbelly to the very tips of her wings, and more than this – oh, more than even the wildest dreamer could have imagined! – her humble black feathers had turned pure gold: not the fiery gold of the sun's outward face but the warm, quiet gold of his heart._

" _And you, if you wish, shall become my bride," murmured the sun. "For this hour you flew into my heart, but you have reigned here as queen from the moment you bravely cast off your shell and drew a lungful of Earth's cold air. I have loved you from the moment of your birth, valiant Greenbrier, and I humored your brother's foolish quest when I saw that it would bring you to me; indeed, the flare that struck him down was my own hand, reaching forth to hasten your brave progress. I regret that I wounded him in my impatience, but he was healed in the very instant he turned toward home, and he and his sons will bear forever the kiss of the sun on their breasts, a crown far superior to a billful of gilding about his nest."_

" _But how shall I wed you?" wondered Greenbrier, her tiny heart blazing with a love to rival the sun's own flames. "For I would, and gladly, but you are no bird, with whom I might build a nest, and preen, and beget many chicks."_

" _That much is simply answered," replied the sun, "for every eve I grow small and bed down in some quiet shadowed place till the night has passed, and it would be my pleasure to take a bird's form and join my mate in a woven stocking-nest for long drowsy hours of preens and coos."_

" _But what of the day?" challenged Greenbrier, for there was a little boldness in her after all. "For these evening hours sound fair wondrous, but I should hate to pass the day apart from you."_

_The sun shimmered and laughed with delight. "As would I, dearest one," he replied. "When I rise to begin my day's work, if you wish, I shall bear you across the heavens in my heart, safe from the heat of my flames and nearer than the most intimate embrace. We may even mate in this fashion," he remarked, almost shyly, "if such does not repulse you."_

" _How should I be repulsed," his beloved answered, "by any union with my mate? Though you will forgive me if I do not understand how it might be accomplished."_

" _Then trust me, my brave bride," the sun bid her, "for my love is a gentle thing, and neither pain nor grief shall befall you in our joining."_

_With these words the sun overwhelmed her – so tenderly; so careful of her fragile form, even in his ardor – filling her with his light till it shimmered to the very tips of her feathers. Greenbrier gave a cry of wonder and pleasure at once, to feel the full glory of the sun blazing with adoration inside her tiny bird's body, and the sun wept with joy, scattering the meadows below with drops of golden bliss, even as he spilled forth his essence in his wife's belly. Elated and spent by their union, the sun set immediately thereafter, bearing Greenbrier to Earth within his heart, and there took the form of a golden bird; a mirror of his mate, if a trifle more luminous in hue, so they might find a makeshift nest and lie together as an ordinary pair, drowsing and preening and cooing till dawn, when they mated again, albeit in a more conventional fashion, before he brought her once more into his heart and ascended for a new day's labor._

_They mated often and in both manners, for the sun is not an animal, to mate only in the season when young are desired, but joined with his beloved anytime they longed for that profound bliss which can only be found in that most intimate union of husband and wife. And from these radiant unions came sunbirds: tiny, brilliantly colored birds that dwell year-round in the hottest of climes, nearest their father, and feast upon nectar, as thick and sweet as the air that surrounds him._

_In time Hawthorne's kin came to be called_ orioles _, for their feathers that so resembled the golden sphere of the sun, though few folk now recall that it was the sun's own fingers that painted the first oriole's breast, nor that every female oriole to this day bears the badge of the sun's love for Greenbrier in the soft muted gold of their own feathers. Orioles follow the sun to warmer climes in winter, where they may now and again catch a glimpse of their swift, jewel-bright cousins, and have a particular fondness for oranges left out for them by hopeful humans, eager for a closer look at sunny feathers. Some suppose the birds are drawn to these miniature suns out of deference to brave Greenbrier, who still passes her days in the very heart of the sun, made immortal by his love, or in memory of the sun's generosity toward foolish Hawthorne._

_But perhaps they hope that, like Hawthorne, they might find an unexpected blessing in the presence of this curious small sun with its nectar-filled flesh, and this is why they pick the fruit clean to the peel: in case just such a rare celestial gift may lie deep within. Or perhaps they wonder if, like Greenbrier, they might through their bravery – in coming so near this golden offering from a human hand – find a glorious, gentle mate, who will set the sun early and delay its rising simply to steal another hour or more in their embrace._

* * *

"I'm sorry the ending was a little weak," I murmur, my hands long since buried beneath Peeta's shirt and tracing drowsy trails up and down his broad back. "I wanted to tie in your oranges somehow and I figured the orioles would be drawn by their similarity to the sun, for one reason or another."

"There was nothing weak about it," he replies huskily. "In fact, it might be the perfect fairy tale, where everyone got exactly what they wanted and more besides; even foolish Hawthorne. And Greenbrier didn't have to share in her brother's reward but won a far greater prize, the likes of which no bird could have imagined."

"A crown of golden feathers and the sun himself for a mate," I recount softly. "At once the grand sovereign of the heavens and a gentle bird to warm her nest and give her chicks."

"And the sun loved her first," he whispers. "Can you imagine how hopelessly he must have longed, Katniss: a great globe of fire in the sky, loving one tiny blackbird from the moment she hatched? A vast golden being with the very hours and seasons at his command, but he could not even speak his love to a humble bird till she bravely –" His voice breaks. "Flung herself into his heart," he says hoarsely.

I kiss the crown of his head and curl my arms against his back, hugging him to me. "Poor Greenbrier," I say. "She must have believed she was flying to her death or grievous injury at the very least, but she did so willingly for the sake of her family. And instead she was given the very sun for her mate and…and was made radiant by his love," I whisper, thinking at once of a golden-feathered blackbird and the moon in ivory doeskins; one adored by the sun and the other painfully aware that she never will be.

"He loved her – _made_ love to her – with his light," Peeta whispers. "Do you suppose it's like that with the sun and moon? When they join in eclipse, the sun pours his love-light – empties his very _self_ – into her –"

"Till she glows with it like a toasting fire," I whisper in reply and bite my lip against a small, hopeless sob. "Surely the moon would burst to contain the sun."

"No, Katniss," he soothes, raising his head to kiss my eyes closed. "You said it yourself, sweetling: the sun is gentle and patient, so careful with his beloved's precious body. If he can fill a tiny blackbird with his love and bring her only wonder and bliss, surely there are no words sufficient to describe how it would feel when he coupled with the huntress-moon herself."

The sob escapes me; faintly, like the whimper of some distant wounded thing, but Peeta and I are so entwined that he must feel it as though it came from his own breast. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" he asks, so gently, easing a hand out from beneath my shirt to cradle my cheek. "Are you – you're _crying,_ " he breathes, and rolls off me at once to gather my small body in his arms like a heartbroken child's. "Little Katniss, what's hurting you?" he croons, dusting my face with tiny featherlight kisses. "Please tell me, sweetling; let me help."

"I love these stories so much," I whisper, blinking fiercely against the stubborn tears. "They're so beautiful it takes my breath away simply to recount them, but they make me cry too because…because it's never like that in real life," I choke out, the closest I can come to telling him the truth.

"Oh, sweetheart," he sighs, and for a moment he sounds as despondent as I feel. "It's _exactly_ like that in real life. The trick is discovering which story – or stories – you're in and then waiting for the other players to appear.

"You are the heroine in all these tales, Katniss," he whispers in awe. "You are Greenbrier; the golden blackbird, and the silver huntress-moon, and the sun himself would fall prostrate to win your love. You are Ashpet the cinder-lass and Ashpet the huntress; wild, proud, and so very beautiful. You are the storytelling mousekin that a king would sell everything to possess and the clever mousekin who completes two impossible tasks and is herself the solution to the third: beneath her humble furs, a maiden more beautiful than the Evening Star.

"I wish you could see yourself through my eyes," he says sadly. "But if you ever so much as glimpsed the stunning huntress-queen that you are, you would run barefoot out to the stable, leap astride Rye and gallop back to the heavens where you belong, hunting the bear and deer and rabbits made of stars."

"That sounds like a lonely life," I whisper, overcome by the tender poetry cascading from his sweet mouth, seemingly without thought.

"But it won't be – it can _never_ be," Peeta insists, "because every heroine is beloved. Often without her knowledge, but lover there is, every time, to whom she is both moon and sun and stars to boot. He may be a gentle toymaker or the third son of a king or the sun himself – or…or maybe there's a boy who's all three at once," he adds tremulously. "But lover there is, Katniss, _every_ time, and this boy – this sun, this prince, this helpless fool – dreams of being eclipsed in your arms."

I take his face in my small hands and press a kiss between his eyes. "I like this story best of all," I murmur. "It's unfinished, of course, but the ending is so hopeful."

"It's my favorite too," he confides softly. "I've never lived a fairy tale before and yet here I am, on the fringe of every wonderful tale lived out at once, baking bread and cakes for the moon and sharing her supper of star-game. It's _more_ than hopeful," he says, nuzzling my nose with his, "and I'm on tenterhooks to see how it ends."

"With babies, I hope," I whisper, speaking the wish aloud for the first time, and Peeta melts against me with a low moan.

"And _such_ babies," he murmurs. "Fawns and stars and kits and chicks – and mousekins too. I'll be washing diapers and baking sweet buns for the rest of my days."

For the first time I envision Peeta with _my_ children: spooning bread pudding into a tiny rosebud mouth, nibbling on dove-brown nubbin-toes as the toddler attached to them wriggles and squeals with delight, or cradling a drowsy dark head beside this very fire as he recounts a tale from his own childhood, and a bubble of joy shakes my shoulders. "That sounds very fine indeed," I sigh, and burrow my face into the curve of his neck. "Tell me more," I whuffle. "Tell me about these babies and where they would come from."

His throat rumbles faintly in a chuckle. "You're determined to get your own bedtime story, aren't you?" he chides, but with so much affection that my heart glows. "One you can fall asleep to instead of staying awake to tell."

"The Baker's Son and the Fox Kits," I instruct him sleepily. "Sort of like 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids' only no one gets eaten, just a great deal of dough and cake batter. And the mother isn't a goat but a huntress with a long black braid –"

" _Two_ long black braids," Peeta corrects. "If you're making me come up with this story on the spot, I should at least get free rein with the details."

"Fair enough," I concede with a grand yawn. "I'll even start you off: _Once upon a time a huntress set out for the woods and left her six kits in a bakery._ "

"Four kits," he amends lightly. "And three goslings. You said 'seven kids,' after all."

I bury my smile in his neck, envisioning our litter of furry black goslits and honey-feathered kitlings. "I'll agree to that," I reply, and go on: " _She did this a-purpose, for her younglings were grown enough to be bothersome, and she held the baker's third and finest son in high esteem._ "

"Fattening me up for the kill, I see," he teases. "How long do you intend to be in the woods, huntress mine, so I know how long I have to keep paws and beaks out of the batter?"

"Two weeks," I decide, and giggle at his appalled squawk. "I'm a huntress- _queen_ , you know, and we're traveling to my grand summer palace for feasts and parties and a ball or two, in and amongst the hunting forays, of course."

"And you'll be fine without your children for _two weeks_?" he demands in mock-horror.

"Of course not," I reply. "I have every expectation that the baker's son will put my seven babies in a knapsack after about fifteen minutes and set off on foot to bring them back to me. I'll be lonesome for them by nightfall," I assure him, "and anyway, I'm a solitary creature: I need a sweet, steady boy to sit and talk and dance with me at all those feasts and balls and parties."

"I knew dancing would come into it somewhere," he grumbles, but so happily that the lament is entirely unconvincing. "Are you wearing your little red slippers, vixen mine?"

"And sitting astride a fat brown pony," I reply, drifting firmly into a dream. "Come and find me, little prince."

* * *

_I'm dressed in a deerskin, wrapped around me from breasts to knees like a primitive sort of robe, and playing with my white bear on a hearthrug. He rolls me onto my back to nose my ears wetly and lick my neck, making me squeal with laughter, and I merrily retaliate, climbing astride his broad back to cover his head with kisses and nibbling greedily at his tender little ears. He whuffles in reply, giving a great shake of his shoulders, and I throw my arms around his neck, burying my face in his plush coat._

_I love the feel of him against my skin, all fur and musk and sinew._

_I love him._

_I love his lush fur, the heat of his powerful body, his wet kisses; even his breath, moist and sweet with honeycomb in my face. I love him, need him, cherish him like I've never done with another human being._

_I grasp deep fistfuls of his coat and tug; a playful gesture, meant to incite more rolling and licking and wet whuffles against my neck, but the skin slips off him entirely in one seamless piece, like a garment, and I fall to the floor with his fur in my hands._

_Winded and stricken, I clamber up to see if my poor skinned bear is all right and gasp to find someone else entirely crouched beside me: a human boy with rosy fair skin, a crown of pale curls, and not a stitch of clothing to cover his stocky young body. He wraps his arms around himself with an involuntary shiver and gazes at me, his blue eyes wide and hopeful._

_I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, as though that simple gesture will banish this unwelcome stranger and return my beloved friend and playmate, but when I open my eyes the boy is still there, gazing at me as though I am both moon and sun and stars to boot._

" _Where is my bear?" I cry._

_The boy brings a hand to his chest. "Right here," he whispers, tapping his heart with his fingertips._

" _No," I whimper, covering my sob with a hand as my eyes bead with angry tears._

_I can't breathe. I don't want a boy, all pink and naked; all bare skin and blue eyes and curly yellow hair. I want my friend – my bear. My sweet, silly, playful companion._

_I glare at the boy but he's not looking at me anymore. He's sunk down to sit on the hearthrug, his face buried in his hands and his powerful shoulders slumped in defeat. He looks heartbroken._

_His legs are loosely folded in front of him and I notice that the right one ends below the knee in a blunt pink stump._

_My bear's right hind leg is shortened too. He keeps himself upright and steady without too much trouble, but he's missing a paw there from a wolverine attack._

_And there's a scrap of cloth – red plaid cotton, stained and threadbare – tied around the boy's left wrist, exactly like the one my bear wears always, tied around his left foreleg like a lover's token. I stretch out brave fingers to touch it where it lies against his skin._

" _It_ is _you," I breathe._

" _It's always been me, Katniss," he says softly, raising his head to meet my eyes. "I wore the skin because of you. You feared me less – liked me more – when I wasn't a boy._

" _You hid yourself from me too," he murmurs, stretching out his own fingers to brush the deerskin over my ribs. "In feathers and fur and skins and snow. Did you think I wouldn't want you if I thought we were different species? That I wouldn't love you with all my heart if you were a bird or a doe or the moon herself? Or," he wonders, quieter still, "was it so I wouldn't realize that you loved me in return?"_

_He chuckles sadly. "I hid myself to win your love and you hid yourself so you wouldn't reveal it."_

_I draw near him like an animal, touching and sniffing him cautiously. He smells of my bear, warm and musky and male, with moist, honeyed breath. His hands are large and powerful but smell of bread and lemons._

_I would let them roll me to my back._

_His skin is downy with a dusting of fine pale yellow hairs and I stroke his lightly furred forearms in wonder._

" _Are you my sweetheart?" I whisper._

" _Only you can answer that," he says._

_I lean in to brush his mouth with my own, brave and curious all at once, and gasp at how wonderful it feels – not merely his mouth, so soft and sweet, but the act of pressing our mouths together._

_He touches the place where the end of the deerskin is secured; the valley between my little breasts. "May I?" he whispers._

_It seems only natural that I should be naked like him, and that he should remove my disguise as I did his._

_At my nod, the deerskin falls away beneath his careful hands and he moans with longing at the sight of my naked body. "Beloved," he breathes. "You are more radiant than the sun."_

_He makes a bed of our shed skins then lays me gently on my back and moves over me; his mouth descends, soft and exquisitely wet, but it's not the same at all. He begins at my throat and ears, covering both with damp, breathless kisses, then he lifts his golden head and lowers it to my breast, kissing the brown peak again and again with increasing desperation and finally parting his lips and engulfing the whole breast in his mouth._

_I sob and arch my back, as though I can press my tiny breast deeper into this hot, wet cavern of bliss and he sucks; shyly at first, a quiet grunt and a soft tug of that sweet, wide mouth, but he quickly grows bolder in answer to my little pants and gasps, suckling hungrily at each breast in turn, though I have no milk to feed him, and giving throaty, muffled moans against my mourning-dove skin._

_I marvel that mating has found a use for these proud, empty peaks, and a mutually pleasurable one at that. I wonder if it's the husband's mouth that rouses the breasts, awakening them to plump and flow with milk for the smaller, greedier mouths to come._

_He lifts his head with a gasp and kisses my mouth, an act I'd half-forgotten in the face of headier pleasures, and somehow it's different this time: deeper, wetter, hungrier. I grasp fistfuls of his downy curls and wrap my legs around his waist – but here too something is different. Something juts from his groin like a fleshy root, something firm and startling that feels indescribably_ good _butting against the hidden cleft between my own legs, which has grown warm and slippery in invitation._

" _Come inside me," I beg him, but he shakes his head and gently eases my thighs open, away from his hips, before shifting back on his knees. We are strikingly different and yet perfectly matched in these secret places that want so desperately to merge. His belly is taut and fair-skinned with a thick mat of pale curls at the root of that hard rosy protrusion, and my belly is soft and brown as a dove's with a bush of black curls veiling the hollow, deep below, that was surely shaped for him._

" _Let me love you first," he pleads._

" _But you love me already," I puzzle breathlessly. "Whole and entire."_

" _Beak to tail feathers," he affirms with a gentle chuckle, "and all four of your earthy little paws; I love you all, and all_ of _you. But I wish_ to _love you, sweetling," he explains. "To love every inch of your body with every inch of my own, and this secret, sacred place is worthier of love than any other. I would not enter this garden till first I had hallowed it with tenderness."_

_I glance at the place of which he speaks and think it a garden indeed, with its topsoil of coarse black curls and furrow of warm moist earth below, where only an assiduous gardener with a long plow might reach deep enough to seed._

" _My garden is yours, to tend as you will," I tell him softly. "Though I cannot think what labor you should find there, aside from plowing and planting."_

" _Oh, my stubborn love," he sighs. "There is pleasure to be found in a garden as well as industry: the sight and scent of its blossoms, for one, and beads of nectar upon the tongue."_

 _I clap my thighs together and sit up, gaping at him with mingled horror and longing. I had imagined he meant to caress my hidden place with his fingers, not bring his sweet shy face to its portal, to gaze and smell and_ taste _–_

" _Open the door to me, Katniss," he entreats in a whisper. "My love is a gentle thing, and neither pain nor grief shall befall you."_

_I lie back on our shed skins once more and open my thighs; a hesitant, narrow parting, but my boy's hand brushes my belly in greeting and my knees fall wide in welcome._

_He lies on his belly between my legs and brushes the curly mound of my groin with his lips, over and over again, making me shiver with anticipation, then his thumbs find the slit and carefully,_ so _carefully, ease the slippery folds open, as though he parts the petals of a fragile, stubborn bud._

 _I won't look at what he sees – I_ can't _– but his face is radiant with awe, as though that crude, glistening place conceals a jewel._

" _Oh Katniss," he moans. "You bear the moon between your thighs."_

_His mouth descends – so patient, even at the end – and I feel his tongue, not rough and vigorous as when it laved my nipples but soft; softer than fur or down or cloud as it glides along my slippery secret place, and some floodgate deep in my pelvis gives way. I buckle against that gentle golden tongue with a sob as warm fluid trickles from my hollow and my boy, always so sweet, obligingly cleans me; here with slow silky strokes, there with swift tiny laps, like a hummingbird's tongue, darting and precise to capture every drop of nectar, and my thighs sprawl bonelessly to avail him of his strange feast._

_I'm limp, dazed and drowsy when he finally kisses the mound of my groin one last time and climbs up beside me to gather me in his arms, but instead of fitting himself inside me as I half-expect, he merely nestles his rosy, rootlike organ between my thighs. It's softer now; still firm and warm but no longer jutting, and it feels both deeply satisfying and wholly inadequate to have him in that place; right where I like him but nowhere near where I want him._

" _So beautiful, beloved," he moans, and there is a new, wild tang to his breath; the sharp scent of my secret place mingled with the honey of his mouth. "You are even more beautiful in surrender than you are in victory."_

" _I am yours," I reply, bending to kiss his heart, and sink to rest my head there, made heavy with bliss. "My door is always open to you, beloved," I sigh. "You are welcome in my garden, to kiss its petals and lap its nectar – or if you wish, to delve and seed its hidden plot."_

" _I would I could bury myself deep in your sweet damp soil," he whispers. "That I could seed your dark, warm earth and winter the full season in that glistening cavern, tending our precious shoots."_

" _You are a diligent gardener, beloved," I moan. "But my soil is barren, not rich as you believe."_

" _No longer," he counters, so gently. "You guarded it so well through years of want and despair, when the world around you was too cold and your body too fragile to kindle and sustain a new life, but when you came to me – when food and warmth and care became plentiful – that guard, so fierce, slowly began to ease, even as your body softened and ripened with health."_

_He shyly cups one breast, little larger than a plum in his broad, strong hand, and circles the dark bud with his thumb. "You are a bramble-thicket, beloved," he whispers, "all strong woody vines and exquisite thorny places, but the berries that grow here are plump and sweet. I could feast on you in full contentment for the rest of our days," he sighs._

" _It was not mere food that quickened me," I whisper, pressing my tiny breast deeper into his warmth. "It was you: at my table, at my side, and in my bed, so tender and careful and patient, that made my cold womb stir cautiously to life."_

" _I did not intend to rouse you," he says, almost ruefully. "Though I thought often and longed for it – for you to be whole and hale and perhaps, some years hence, to carry and birth our young."_

" _I did not intend to desire you," I reply, "even when I embraced my love for you, so long burning in my heart, but my body knew you for its mate from your first touch and duly began preparation for our joining. I simply did not know how to recognize it._

" _It is ready for you, and longing," I tell him softly. "Though the soil has not yet turned."_

" _Virgin ground must be tilled before seed will take root," he answers, softer still, and his organ gently presses the mouth of my hollow, firm and pulsing and so gloriously warm. "Would you have me tend you thus, beloved?" he whispers._

" _I would have you winter inside me," I whisper. "Your breadth filling my emptiness the whole season through, stirring and seeding me again and again, till my belly swells with your twins."_

_He closes his eyes in a quiet sob and turns me once more onto my back on the skins, but this time his body follows mine and that warm pulsing part of him slips into me, into the hollow that was shaped for and contours perfectly to him. He fits deeper than I ever dreamed and we cry out as one at the union._

" _Oh, sweet boy," I whimper, spreading my thighs as wide as I can and cupping his backside to pull him deeper still._

" _Katniss," he moans, pressing and pressing and pressing toward my womb in breathtakingly deep, firm pulses, as though he would bury himself there in truth. "Beloved, I am yours."_

_He spills inside me, hot and sweet as a healing fire, and my body tremors and buckles beneath him as white-gold light – surely, the very essence of the sun – blazes behind my eyes. "I am eclipsed in you," he whispers, kissing the tears from my cheeks in reverent adoration, "and made complete."_

" _I am made whole," I whisper back and wonder how I lived – nay, survived – so long without this vital piece of my very being burrowed snugly into my empty place. My skin is dewy and luminous from our joining, or its aftermath, and I marvel, "And I am made radiant by your love."_

_He gathers me to him, wrapping our spent, trembling bodies in the comfort of our shed skins, but he remains inside me, warm and wet and deep. "You were radiant the first moment I laid eyes on you," he murmurs. "My love is but a gilding upon your innate incandescence, but you wear it like a crown._

" _Will you winter with me, my queen?" he implores huskily. "May I adore you in every moment and every fashion, and tend your garden with gentle diligence?"_

"Our _garden," I correct him, "for I am yours, and you have tilled and seeded what before was mine alone, and what may take root there will be the product of us both."_

" _What_ will _take root," he corrects me in turn, so tenderly. "Your soil is richer than you realize, eager to kindle and carry and bring forth new life."_

" ' _That winter was for wooing, for wild courtship gifts and shy careful preens and nesting,' " I recall softly, as something heard once in a dream. " 'And the spring that followed was for kits and chicks.' I will give you the first, beloved," I offer, "if you will endeavor to give me the second."_

" _In every moment and every fashion," he promises ardently. "May I endeavor once more, sweetling, ere we retire for the night?"_

" _You may endeavor all the night through," I assure him, winding my legs about his waist to keep him buried inside me, "for I see no reason for us to part," and I laugh with joy as he rolls me to my back and pumps eagerly toward my womb once more._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to **ghtlovesthg** for prereading/soft-betaing this chapter, and on Christmas Eve to boot!
> 
> Katniss sings two German children's songs in this chapter, "Fuchs, du hast die Gans gestohlen" (Fox, you've stolen the goose) and "Alle meine Entchen" (All my [little] ducklings), both of which I compiled from various translations with a bit of personal poetic license, particularly in the former. I wanted the English version of the fox-and-goose song to rhyme as well as reflect life in District Twelve, hence changing the hunter's gun and shot to a bow and arrows, and I also wanted to make a point of the fact that _Fuchs_ (fox) becomes _Füchslein_ (little vixen) in the final verse. Granny Ashpet's father had a German heritage of some degree, which is why he called his daughter "Aschenputtel" (the German Cinderella) rather than "Ashpet" (the Appalachian Cinderella) and also why he seems like an "elfin king," speaking "poetry" and "fairy-words," in Katniss's mind. (There's much more to his story, if that's not already apparent, which Katniss will ultimately discover, and it'll explain why Ashpet had eyes unlike anyone else in Twelve.) It's my belief that he and Elspeth agreed on their child's name in advance, sharing a love of old tales as they did, and while he accordingly named the baby Ashpet after Elspeth died, "Aschenputtel" would come more easily to his tongue, especially as an endearment.
> 
> The _Little Prince_ quotes are taken from the Katherine Woods translation (i.e., the only one that sounds "right," especially in the fox chapter). I'm taking it as (head)canon that the most beautiful portions of this story survived the Dark Days verbatim, especially this beloved passage, and that while Katniss and Peeta heard different POVs of this scene while growing up, the fox's monologue was a constant and therefore, Peeta would instantly recognize the quote and be deeply moved by Katniss reciting it to him.
> 
> The oriole folktale/myth is my own invention, to the best of my knowledge, as is Peeta's storytelling mousekin. The fairy tale Katniss recalls from her childhood is "The White Cat," one of the flowery and highly romantic French fairy tales of Madame D'Aulnoy, which I first discovered as a very young child in the brief but remarkable Errol le Cain picture book retelling, and Katniss's response to the tale reflects my own. Animal bride/groom tales are particularly magical to a child, I think, because you don't expect the helpful talking creature to turn into a beautiful human being, and the revelation is a truly breathtaking thing. "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids" is a lesser-known Grimm tale that I enjoyed as a child and would carry over quite well to Appalachia/District Twelve, in my humble opinion.
> 
> While I haven't explicitly stated that Katniss told Peeta her great-grandmother's surname, I'm assuming that it came up on one of their story nights, especially as Granny Ashpet grew up with her late mother's name, not her mysterious father's. I debated heavily between "Greenbriar" and "Greenbrier" and just recently discovered that greenbrier (both spellings) is an edible wild plant – with potato-like starchy tubers to boot! – as well as (in the "brier" spelling) a county and river in West Virginia, which clinched the matter once and for all. Even more perfect: a certain species of greenbrier is called "catbrier"!
> 
> The dream sequence at the end of this chapter was originally slated to appear much later in the story but it fit too perfectly here, especially as the culmination of Katniss's sexual awakening. Before anyone gets too excited, none of this is being acted out by Katniss as she sleeps; however, I've long believed that Peeta shares at least a portion of her glorious dreams so it's entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that he experienced that scene, in full or in part, in his own mind.
> 
> I was recently struck by the potential Christian themes in "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" (the fairy tale on which WtM is based, for anyone coming in late), particularly as I've yet to come across a discussion of this elsewhere, and I put together a Tumblr post briefly detailing the ones that stood out to me. (I'm **porchwood** on Tumblr and the post is "Potential Christian Parallels in 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon.'") If this is an area that interests you, I invite you to check it out and share your thoughts - but only if you're already familiar with the fairy tale or don't mind potential spoilers.


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